AI for Good: Imagine and Connect
AI for Good: Imagine & Connect
What does AI for Good actually look like? Not in theory. In practice, inside the organizations already doing the work and applied by individuals in action campaigns like Idealist Days.
This is an evening for curious people trying to figure out where AI fits in their mission-driven work. Come to get inspired. Stay to connect with others.
All are welcome, but the event is intended for proactive users of AI that want to see how others are using these tools in innovative and inspiring ways.
When asked what she'd like to get out of doing this, one of the speakers said "the most fruitful possible thing for me would be engaging in dialogue with incredibly sophisticated users and or engaging with organizational leaders that are trying to do adoption in interesting ways". If that's you, join us!
6:00 PM. Imagine.
Angela Ng is the Director of Business Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, where she has spent nearly six years leading sustainability, AI, and innovation programs across CMU's global campuses. With a decade of international development experience with work featured in the NYTimes and Smithsonian, spanning water and sanitation in Bangladesh and the DRC, coding and robotics in Rwanda and Zimbabwe, maternal and child health in India, DEIB and climate in the Middle East, and disaster resilience across Asia, she brings a field-tested lens to emerging technology.
She is the co-founder of the AI for Social Good NYC community, and will open with a grounded look at the field: the real costs of AI development, from data center energy consumption to safety and governance gaps, alongside concrete examples of nonprofits and social impact organizations using AI creatively and well. This is a set of questions worth asking before calling any of it good.
Ida Benedetto, Founder of Uncommon Places Design, and researcher whose work on transformative experience is taught at Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and NYU, brings a different lens: what it takes to design engagement with AI that moves people toward harder thinking, inspired by the full spectrum of human capabilities.
7:00 PM. Connect.
Lightly facilitated conversation. Your questions drive it. What do you want to see? What are you trying to figure out? What would change how you work?
Networking conversation for anyone who wants to stay and figure out how we build for good, together.
About Idealist
Idealist's mission is to invite people to imagine, connect, and act in order to create more free and dignified lives for all people.
If you haven't heard, Idealist recently launched a campaign called Idealist Days that invites people to answer the question: What if, once a month—on the same day—we did one thing for someone or something we care about. We call these Idealist Days, the days that have the same day and month like 2/2, 7/7, and 10/10, excellent days for sparking and celebrating collective action.
While most of the actions take place on Idealist days, there are also events like this one that aim to build capacity for doing good on Idealist Days and every day.