Achieving impact through intergovernmental co-operation on artificial intelligence

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has organised activities on AI in Latin America and the Caribbean, ranging from generation of knowledge, webinars and workshops on AI, to the development of pilot projects.

fAIr LAC

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) leads an initiative, ‘fAIr LAC,’ the alliance in Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region between public and private sectors, civil society and academia, to promote the responsible and ethical use of AI. The objective is to improve public services (e.g.) education, health, and social protection by developing knowledge products, informing the conversation around AI, implementing experiments and pilot projects of AI, and creating practical tools to apply the OECD ethical principles and mitigate potential risks. The initiative includes a regional observatory to map and track AI projects and AI use cases.

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From Principles to Practice

fAIr LAC, as well as several countries in Latin American and around the globe, adopted the OECD ethical principles when using AI. How do we get these principles applied in practice? How do we ensure that AI projects comply with ethical guidelines?

 Since it is not automatic to move from principles to observable characteristics, practical resources that guide this journey are needed. Therefore, fAIr LAC developed different tools that seek to facilitate this landing of ethical principles:

 – The Data Science Toolkit is a guide for technical teams with recommendations and good practices to avoid contrary (often unexpected) results in decision makers’ objectives. It was updated and co-published in a joint effort with the OECD, in English and Spanish.

– The Project Management Manual is a practical guide that seeks to provide recommendations and good practices to the project manager when designing, executing, and monitoring an AI project. It was published together with the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez’s Gob Lab in Spanish.

– The Ethical Self-Assessment seeks to review the main areas that should be considered throughout the project or solution to mitigate the level of ethical risks associated with AI—designed for agencies in the public sector and actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In November 2021, fAIr LAC launched the first MOOC in Spanish that addresses principles, challenges, and opportunities for the ethical and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence for the public sector. 

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