Understanding Artificial Intelligence and its potential for Sustainable Development @ TechNovation ESCWA

Tuesday, 19 March 2019 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Understanding Artificial Intelligence and its potential for Sustainable Development

At the Second Arab High-level Forum on WSIS and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Tue 19 March 2019, 13:30-14:30, Committee Room 2 of ESCWA (B1 level)

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY, UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR WESTERN ASIA, IN COOPERATION WITH THE LEBANESE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY.

This TechNovation Talk will be held during the "Second Arab High-level Forum on WSIS and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development". The presenters will explain what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is, and how it works. They will also provide a brief overview to concepts such as general and narrow Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well to practical uses of AI in the present and near future. The talk will highlight opportunities for applications for sustainable development and provide a practical introduction for participants with little or no computing background.

The presenters will discuss AI techniques allowing to recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, and surprise – called Affective computing. Textual and more recently multimodal emotion analysis has been gaining increased attention, with various applications ranging over opinion mining, blog analysis, and client feedback on the Web and social media, improving human-computer interaction and decision making, as well as therapeutic and social emotion analysis to help autistic children express their emotions.

Programme:

  • Presentation by Mr. Joe Tekli, Ph.D. School of Engineering, Lebanese American University

Comments by panelists: 

  • Mr. Tarcisio Alvarez-Rivero, UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Strategic Planning and Coordination Section
  • Mr. Ayman Elsherbiny, UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, ICT Policies Section
  • Mr. Raymond Ghajar, Ph.D. Dean, School of Engineering, Lebanese American University
  • Moderator: Mr. Jorge Martinez Navarrete, UN Office of Information and Communications Technology

About the TechNovation Talks & Workshops

The TechNovation Talks feature specialists from academia, private and public sector who explain cutting-edge technologies and their possible uses in education, health, industry, agriculture, and other sustainable development sectors.