AI for social good: the new face of technosolutionism

The growing enthusiasm for applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to humanitarian and development goals has sparked a surge in “AI for Social Good” (AI4SG) initiatives from humanitarian and philanthropic institutions and tech monopolies alike. While these initiatives aspire to address global challenges such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change, they often conceal deeper issues: AI systems that

1) simply fail to live up to their claims

2) encode Eurocentrism, systemic inequities, and injustices, and

3) built under capitalist, extractive, and borderline illegal practices.

In this talk, Abeba Bihrane argues that that many AI4SG efforts are less about meaningful social transformation and more about techsolutionism—where complex political, historical, and social issues are reduced to technical problems assumed to be solvable through “innovation”. By critically examining who defines “good,” who benefits, and what structural issues remain unaddressed, this talk challenges the dominant narratives around AI4SG and calls for a more accountable, human-centric, and context-aware approach to “social good”.