- We are facing a rising tide of global challenges,
and seeing just how fragile our world is when stressed.
We're 18 months into a global pandemic,
misinformation is seemingly everywhere,
and we've just experienced the hottest month
in recorded history.
We know there are consequences to inaction,
so what can we do?
If we retool our thinking,
we can work backwards
to adapt before challenges turn into crises.
Innovation hinges on our ability
to see the world differently,
breaking down barriers and looking between the lines
in an effort to solve
some of the world's toughest challenges.
(rousing music)
I've seen firsthand what it takes to solve problems
at the speed of crises
and the importance of technology's role
in empowering people in communities
to overcome the situations.
10 years ago,
I was a postdoc at Harvard writing and publishing papers,
solving problems in theory.
Soon after, I found myself embedded in a conflict zone,
working with DARPA,
an intelligence team using machine learning and AI
to predict hotspots of violence and protect people.
For me, that was a wake-up call.
And being on the ground,
it was obvious that there was so much that we could do
if we worked with people who were experiencing the problems
and if we build technology
that was designed for the speed of a crisis
and the context of a crisis zone.
(upbeat music)
We've learned how fragile
the architecture of our society is when stressed.
We can see the technology needs to be built differently.
We can see that systems that were designed to be efficient
may also be brittle.
Societal scale problem solving requires new technologies,
technologies that can flex and scale and adapt
to address common problems across crises.
We're doing this by creating a tool set of open technologies
that can be rapidly combined and redeployed.
In the fight against digital crimes,
AI is helping to identify patterns and real-world data,
providing valuable signals
that allow institutions to root out corruption,
identity theft, and other threats.
The same technology is being reapplied
in the global fight against human trafficking,
where there are an estimated 25 million people victimized.
Through a new partnership with the UN
we're helping curate the first global portal
for human trafficking data worldwide.
Institutions around the world will use this
to enact evidence-based policy.
So the integration of an AI based approach
to open technology gives us opportunities
to learn from a changing environment
to be relevant and to be responsive.
A societal challenge as part of the pandemic
is how to get people back to work and back to school
and back to their life in a safe way.
We started developing smart health card technology
about a year ago.
The goal is to give people full control over their data,
both digitally and on paper.
The idea is that anyone who's had a vaccination
or a test result
should have easy access to their information,
to be able to share it on their phone
or with a piece of paper in their pocket.
A vaccination card that's both verifiable and shareable,
it needs to have an open standard
if it's gonna work across society.
The only way to create an open standard across society
is to convene a large collection of stakeholders.
In fact, smart health cards would not be possible
if not for a large coalition
of public and private organizations working together
on open technology standards,
as well as community guidelines.
If we can break down traditional barriers
and bring together diverse minds,
we create solutions that are more adaptable,
more inclusive, and that help us make better decisions.
(upbeat music)
In a crisis,
existing systems and practices start to break down.
Information is especially messy.
You have to gather information quickly from lots of places
in order to match resources with needs.
We're a year into a project
where we're working closely with communities
and how to build technology differently
with them as co-designers.
Building this way requires face-to-face conversations,
human to human collaboration.
We have to spend time with communities.
We have to involve expertise like social theory,
qualitative study, ethnography.
We need to have a community first approach
that's built on relationships that are long-term
so that we understand
the implications of technology long-term
Crisis experience,
and all of our experience during the pandemic,
inspires a new paradigm for research.
It means we have to build technology
at the speed and scale of a problem.
It means we have to understand the context
of people involved.
It's different than a laboratory.
There are consequences to mistakes.
We know the crisis we face today
will be different than those tomorrow.
So what can we do to be ready and resilient?
We have to work together with others,
we have to work in an adaptable, fast fashion
in order to be relevant,
in order to be effective,
in order to have lasting impact.
(upbeat music)