Episodes

  • Till Trojer and Rory Crew on Cash Assistance and AI Strategy: Insights from HEKS and CALP

    Till Trojer and Rory Crew on Cash Assistance and AI Strategy: Insights from HEKS and CALP
    Jun 7 2025
    Till Trojer, AI Officer at HEKS/EPER (Swiss Church Aid), joins Humanitarian AI Today guest host Rory Crew, Technical Advisor on Data and Digitalization with the CALP Network which works on increasing the quality, quantity, and impact of humanitarian cash and voucher assistance, to discuss how mid-sized aid organizations are developing and implementing their AI strategies, and the impact of the aid funding crisis on the sector. Till's role at HEKS/EPER involves helping the organization use AI responsibly, building trust, and ensuring ethical standards by understanding the context and listening to the concerns and needs of teams. Till provided insights into HEKS/EPER’s AI approach, explaining how AI is integrated into their broader digital transformation strategy rather than being treated as a separate entity. He also shared his views on AI as a catalyst for deeper discussions about existing systems, infrastructure, and data hosting dependencies, prompting a critical re-evaluation of reliance on big tech companies. Rory highlighted the timely nature of the conversation, as both cash assistance and AI offer the potential for greater efficiency—a desperate need for the sector amidst calls to do more with less. Both guests emphasized the importance of ensuring that AI solutions are grounded in the communities they serve and avoid the "graveyard of humanitarian pilots" by planning for sustainability and community buy-in from the outset. Ultimately, their vision for futuristic AI centers on systems that prioritize ethics, accountability, and empowerment, refusing unethical tasks and ensuring that communities remain in the driving seat of their own development.
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    58 mins
  • A Critical Discussion on Assessing Humanitarian AI Use Cases

    A Critical Discussion on Assessing Humanitarian AI Use Cases
    May 25 2025
    On this special Humanitarian AI Today episode, focusing on assessing evidence on the effectiveness of humanitarian AI use cases, Alexandra Pittman, CEO of Impact Mapper, Suzy Madigan, Responsible AI Lead with Care International, Gary Forster, CEO of Publish What You Fund, and Linda Raftree and Quito Tsui from the MERL Tech initiative discuss challenges associated with assessing the effectiveness of humanitarian aid activities and activities incorporating applications of artificial intelligence. The discussion touches on challenges associated with collecting, mapping, measuring and assessing data on humanitarian needs and aid activities and activities incorporating uses of AI, and on fundamental questions surrounding crisis contexts, stakeholder engagement, operations, reporting, data transparency, uses of technology and AI, and limits on what the sector can actually deliver around impact. This podcast panel discussion was originally recorded in 2024 to help inform an accompanying discussion focusing on real-world AI use cases and their impact on humanitarian action co-produced by Humanitarian AI Today, the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub and Elrha for a special six-part panel discussion series critically examining different aspects of humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence.
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    48 mins
  • Valentine Pistorozzi on Advances in AI and Boldcode’s Reporter AI Project

    Valentine Pistorozzi on Advances in AI and Boldcode’s Reporter AI Project
    May 14 2025
    In this short Humanitarian AI Today podcast episode Valentine Pistorozzi speaks with Brent Phillips about Boldcode, new projects in the pipeline, and changes in the way that AI applications are being built. Brent and Valentine speak in detail about Boldcode’s https://reporterai.org/ project and about technical aspects of humanitarian AI applications. This interview was recorded as a test in November 2024 to experiment with a short 15 minute interview format for a special series of new Humanitarian AI Today podcast episodes to be published on Mondays.
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    29 mins
  • Luke Marsden from HelixML on the Past, Present, and Future of Generative AI and MLOps

    Luke Marsden from HelixML on the Past, Present, and Future of Generative AI and MLOps
    May 5 2025
    Luke Marsden, CEO of HelixML, speaks with Humanitarian AI Today podcast producer Brent Phillips about how generative AI has evolved since early language models like BERT were introduced and applications like ChatGPT captured widespread popular interest in artificial intelligence, including across the humanitarian community. Luke traces advances in large language models and shares his views on where we are today and where the future of generative AI and the uses of large language models are headed. Luke also touches on top-down pressure on engineering teams to leverage AI, HelixML’s involvement in helping companies deploy large language models locally on their own infrastructure, and Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) which standardizes how AI models connect with different data sources and tools, as well as the future of MLOps.
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    21 mins
  • The New Commons Challenge: Advancing AI for Public Good through Data Commons

    The New Commons Challenge: Advancing AI for Public Good through Data Commons
    May 2 2025
    Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Schroeder speak with Brent Phillips, Humanitarian AI Today podcast producer, about the New Commons Challenge (https://newcommons.ai/) focusing advancing AI for public good through data commons. Dr. Stefaan G. Verhulst is an expert in using data and technology for social impact. He is the Co-Founder of several research organizations including the Governance Laboratory (GovLab) at New York University and The DataTank based in Brussels. Dr. Andrew Schroeder is the Vice President of Research and Analysis for Direct Relief and the Co-Director of CrisisReady. The Open Data Policy Lab, a collaboration between The GovLab and Microsoft, launched the New Commons Challenge initiative to advance the responsible re-use of data for AI-driven solutions that enhance local decision-making and humanitarian response. The Challenge will award two winning institutions $100,000 each to develop data commons that fuel responsible AI innovation in these critical areas. The Challenge builds on the Open Data Policy Lab’s recent report, “Blueprint to Unlock New Data Commons for AI,” which advocates for creating collaboratively governed data ecosystems that support responsible AI development. The Challenge is backed by leading institutions committed to ethical AI and open data. Partners include Direct Relief / CrisisReady, and Harvard Law School Library, and UNESCO as international observer, which will provide subject-matter expertise and evaluation support. Stefaan, Andrew and Brent discuss the New Commons Challenges in detail and touch on data commons for AI, disaster relief and local decision making, AI governance, data sharing architectures and data re-use, advances in artificial intelligence and human-AI interaction, and the intersection of collective intelligence and artificial intelligence.
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    39 mins
  • Ali Al Mokdad on the Aid Funding Crisis: The World Didn’t Fall When Help Left

    Ali Al Mokdad on the Aid Funding Crisis: The World Didn’t Fall When Help Left
    Apr 21 2025
    On this episode of Humanitarian AI Today, Ali Al Mokdad, a seasoned humanitarian leader with extensive field and headquarters experience, offers a very personal perspective on the evolving landscape of humanitarian aid, particularly in the context of the current and hugely destructive aid funding crisis. Brant Phillips, producer of the podcast, and Ali speak in depth about Ali’s writing and analysis on the challenges of bureaucracy and inefficiency in the humanitarian sector, and the need to incrementally optimize processes and strategies. They also discuss in detail a tribute that Ali wrote in response to the crisis to those who kept going when the systems went silent, entitled: “The World Didn’t Fall When Help Left.” The tribute which reads like a poem can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7316798459745853441/ Ali weaves together powerful narratives of human resilience and solidarity with a critical examination of aid operations and artificial intelligence's potential to reshape the sector. The interview highlights the enduring strength of local communities, showcasing examples of individuals and groups rallying to support each other in the face of adversity, filling gaps when traditional aid structures falter due to funding shortfalls and other systemic challenges. The interview is part of a new special series of short episodes published on Mondays, providing a broader range of individuals with opportunities to talk about their work, share their views on humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence and discuss developments shaping the humanitarian and technology sectors.
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    29 mins
  • AI Voices: The Machine Race by Suzy Madigan

    AI Voices: The Machine Race by Suzy Madigan
    Apr 12 2025
    Suzy Madigan, Founder of The Machine Race and Senior Humanitarian Advisor at CARE International, speaks with Humanitarian AI Today podcast Producer, Brent Phillips, about her blog series on AI and society. In this bite-sized episode, they chat through the wide range of ideas explored in The Machine Race blog — from how AI intersects with politics, culture, and philosophy, to its social impact and safety. They also discuss the role of AI in humanitarian operations in the context of aid cuts and what this means for vulnerable communities. This is the first in a HAI mini-series showcasing newsletters and podcasts on AI helping to keep humanitarians informed and connected across communities of practice. Navigate to The Machine Race by Suzy Madigan on Medium and hit the envelope icon to subscribe to new articles: https://medium.com/@themachinerace
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    20 mins
  • Kai Hopkins on the Aid Funding Crisis and Difficult Choices Facing the Humanitarian Community

    Kai Hopkins on the Aid Funding Crisis and Difficult Choices Facing the Humanitarian Community
    Apr 7 2025
    Kai Hopkins, Head of Research Initiatives with Elrha, summarizes hard dilemmas facing the humanitarian and development sectors following massive cuts in government funding. Offering takeaways from Humanitarian Networking and Partnerships Week in Geneva and discussions with other attendees, Kai and Brent discuss four key questions with no easy answers that as a sector we need to consider in response to funding cuts, and discuss the impact of cuts on humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence. Kai shares how his team is responding to the crisis and calls for a fundamental shift in how the humanitarian sector approaches partnerships, emphasizing inclusivity, collaboration, and a willingness to embrace new actors and models. This episode is part of a short interview series, geared for publishing on Mondays, providing individuals with opportunities to briefly talk about their work and share their views on humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence or to talk about developments shaping the humanitarian and technology sectors.
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    22 mins
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