What works and what's next

Flying under the radar is a growing group of social entrepreneurs leveraging AI for social impact. With ethics at the center of their work, they constitute both an early warning system for the unintended consequences of technology as well as an innovation engine, constantly building new ways to address both age-old and emerging challenges.

Now is the time to pay attention to these bright spots, the lessons they are teaching us about building tech that works for humanity, and the role we can all play. 

We believe AI should be designed and deployed with purpose. With the support of Google.org in Spain and Lenovo in Latin America Ashoka is promoting social entrepreneurs' use of artificial intelligence to address large-scale social challenges. We aim to 1) change who shapes and uses AI to increase social impact; 2) build new narratives about the potential of AI for impact, when done right; and 3) build an ecosystem that fosters collaboration between social entrepreneurs, businesses, and public actors to accelerate the development of AI for the common good, including policy recommendations. 

Learning Journey with deep dives into all things justice and AI - from building legal large language models, to open-sourcing solutions that democratize access to justice, and partnering with courts. 

In this issue of the Social Innovations Journal, you will find insights on how to build up your organizational readiness and start tinkering responsibly with AI and practical learnings distilled from use cases in a variety of fields such as justice, health, and media.

Dive into the different learning sessions on decentralized web universe, blockchains, NFTs, DAOs and real life examples from the field. A learning out loud series from 2022. 

In June 2022, we brought together 5 Ashoka Fellows in Spain for a 3-day gathering to share and build new perspectives on how to shift power in tech. Together with Gemma Galdon Clavell, Helena Puig Larrauri, David Cuartielles, Miguel Luengo and Fran Diaz we identified a set of policy pathways to ensure technology works for people and planet: from taxing the polarization footprint of platforms to making it too expensive to run "dirty" data centers.