Brownbag lunch: What does AI look like in Global Majority countries?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) could transform many – perhaps even most – human activities. What that transformation looks like has not yet clearly emerged and is even contested. With most AI capabilities concentrated in a small number of corporations and universities, in an even smaller number of industrialized countries, the debate lacks diversity. There are concerns about making sure all voices are heard, and no one is left behind. This leaves decision makers with a difficult problem: they are supposed to build safe, stable policy environments to facilitate the deployment of AI in ways that benefit everyone, but they do not have eyes on the perception of their fellow citizens on AI, nor of their expectations, hopes and anxieties, nor on information on how AI deployments in Global Majority countries are actually contributing to sustainable development.

In 2024, the UNDP Accelerator Labs prototyped methods to hear from stakeholders that are rarely listened to: ordinary people from all walks of life, in Global Majority countries. In a partnership with the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), listening exercises were run in Morocco and Paraguay. Inspired by the interest in the presentation of his work at the Participatory AI Research and Practice symposium in Paris, on the sidelines of the 2025 AI Action Summit, the Labs – in partnership with UNDP’s Human Development Report Office – decided to expand it by mapping the signals picked up across the Labs network, as well as the ways in which AI is starting to be deployed in development programming across the planet. In this brown bag lunch, we review some of the resulting insights, and how they could be taken forward.

Mr. Pedro Conçeição, Director of UNDP Human Development Report Office, will provide opening remarks, followed by key speakers including: Jeremy Boy, Lead Data Scientist at UNDP Accelerator Labs, Najoua Soudi, Head of Solutions Mapping at UNDP Morocco Accelerator Lab, and Betty Chemier, Head of Experimentation at UNDP Paraguay Accelerator Labs.

The discussion will conclude with remarks from Miguel Alvarez Rodriguez, EU AI Office (DG CONNECT), followed by a Q&A.

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