The defining question of our time is no longer whether AI will transform our world. It already has. What the world needs now is a moral compass for the technology, which is why I introduced the concept of Compassionate AI to the 12,000-plus delegates from 170 countries who attended the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva earlier this month.
If we are serious about ensuring that AI contributes to the common good, not just to profit and power, we must send AI engineers and developers out of their laboratories for one month. Let them meet children working in mines and factories, families displaced by conflict, and vulnerable communities enduring poverty, discrimination, and exclusion. Let them walk beside people whose lives are shaped far more by uncertainty, fear, and injustice than by any technological advance. Even one month can change how a person thinks, and that will bear on how developers build this technology and shape the future.
