How everyone and anyone can use AI for good

Source: Stack Overflow Blog

Editor’s note: This blog is part two of a two‑part series. Read part one on organizations using AI for humanitarian and environmental good here.

I won’t be a denialist and say that AI has not aided the deterioration of human rights in many places (including the US). But I’ll return to my argument from the last part of this series: what if we could do enough good to make a dent in the bad? I’d argue that the work of AWS’s Compute for Climate Fellows and Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab are beginning to make just that dent—and now, faster than ever.

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The “Do‑Goodery vs. Do‑Baddery” Conversation

Much of my conversation with Kleiner Perkins’s Ryan Panchadsaram centered on this ongoing battle between do‑goodery and do‑baddery, which plagues every part of our society—from how we run our governments to the corporations we fund and even the way the specific communities we live in function.

“We have to find the balance of powering ahead responsibly,” he said.
“That’s always been the test with technology.”

We agreed that this balance is precarious, always on the verge of tipping toward a bleak future for humanity:

“I think it’s important to push forward on progress in ways that help us live healthier, learn more, and get work done in meaningful ways so you can spend time with family and loved ones.”

But a world of “AI for optimists” (as Panchadsaram and I themed our conversation) cannot exist without an acute awareness of how AI is also being misused.

“[You have to] be really aware of what you could call the negative things that can happen from it,” he explained.
“The deep demand for energy and water is upsetting the dynamic in lots of communities. And the application of AI in the defense space… when used for good it protects Americans and keeps our cities safe, but when used for bad it starts to cross the line.”

Crossing that line means the violation of basic human rights and the devaluation of human lives, as has been seen recently in communities around the world.

“AI can be a tool that helps create a better relationship between citizens and services [like healthcare and aid]. But also,” Panchadsaram cautions, “the flip can happen too… we have to make sure that the AI is being used in a way that’s actually helping you and I and not being used in a way to discriminate.”

Why Doing Good Helps Identify Bad

Panchadsaram believes that doing good will actually help us spot and fight unethical or harmful actions:

“If you can prove that so much good can happen, you can easily draw on the other side of what bad looks like. Then you can stop that from happening.”

Creating net‑good with AI isn’t limited to those with funding from AWS or Microsoft. It can be extended to how and when we use AI tools in everyday life.

“If you don’t try these [AI] tools, you are missing out on seeing how they could improve the way you work, the way you plan, the way you do things. But also, you miss out on being able to critique them, to engage with them, to help shape them.”

Panchadsaram stresses that participation in the conversation is fundamental in the battle between do‑goodery and do‑baddery:

“This field changes every week, every month. The AI that you and I experienced a year ago was so radically different from today,” he says, which is why it’s important to, in his words, “vocalize critiques [so they] can be applied in the moment.”

Applying the Same Principle to Climate

The same advice—you can do good just by being an active part of the conversation—applies to the climate crisis:

“As employees of these [large] companies or as consumers, we have to be pushing them to still have bold climate commitments because without it, they’re just going to think of it as an afterthought.”

A Call for Mindful Engagement

Ultimately, Panchadsaram is an advocate for mindful engagement with our society, including AI. When we are engaged, we can be loudly critical of the bad and loudly supportive of the good, adding to the power of our collective voices in the discourse about how we run our governments, our companies, our communities, and our technology—all of which will define the future of our world.

In my conversation with Panchadsaram, I was further validated in my belief that one of the most dangerous things humans can become is apathetic.

Personal Inspiration

Part of my inspiration for this piece came from a conversation with my boss at Stack Overflow, Matt Trocchio. While brainstorming blog ideas together, he asked me a simple but heady question:

If AI is meant to increase our productivity, make us more efficient, and replace some of us at work, what is it in service to? Will we have four‑day work weeks? Shorter workdays? More vacation? More time with family? What is it all for?

My first thought was, “No, none of those things will happen. This whole thing is for shareholder value.” While that kind of apathy and disillusionment is common in my generation—and I think somewhat our prerogative—nihilism is not really my style. It’s why I wanted to figure out what it would look like for AI to be for good.

Even as I started to write this piece, I doubted there would be much I could say that would balance out all the negatives that have come out of AI (and technology as a whole). Then I remembered Holden Karau and… (the article continues).

FightHealthInsurance

While in my undergrad, I had a long conversation with my sociology professor, Dr. Mi Kyung Kim. During our chat, I asked why she thought we have such huge swings between conservatism and liberalism in the United States (I took this class in April 2020, so you can probably guess why the topic came up). She pointed me to a few studies and think pieces on it, but what I remember most from that discussion was what she said at the end:

many people think society naturally becomes more progressive over time, but that’s incorrect—and frankly, privileged—thinking. People fought long and hard for us to be where we are today and to be afforded the rights we take for granted. And even now, many people are fighting for a continuance of those rights—or, for some people, to even get them in the first place. It’s actually in the interest of the powerful for things to stay the same, and that’s why it seems like history always repeats itself. It is not natural for society to move towards freedom and progress—the only way to push it forward is for us to fight our way there.

I think when Holden Karau created FightHealthInsurance, she really was fighting—not just for access to easy and affordable healthcare, but also for a better world for the people around her. And while it may not be as far‑reaching or world‑defining as the work of Compute for Climate or Canary Speech, it was a fight she took on from the comfort of her home, with the tools she had, and the free time she got after work. She did it just because she could.

This, dear reader, is the fight I want to urge you to be a part of. But how do you do that? Simply start with the things you care about.

“When the tool empowers you… it gives you a super‑power, and that’s the sweet spot. I would love to think that these things are giving us all superhuman powers on the things we love and care about.”
— Ryan Panchadsaram

Those are the keys—love and care—and you have to find that thing that encompasses them.

• For Kenny Lee from Aigen, that thing was building a future with no harmful chemicals in our food.
• For Max Easton and Smartex, it was zero waste.
• For Jeff Adams and Henry O’Connell, founders of Canary Speech, it was helping people live longer and happier lives with early healthcare intervention.
• For Lisbeth Kauffman of Compute for Climate, the folks from Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, and my friend Ryan Panchadsaram, it was fighting the climate crisis.
• And for Holden Karau and her co‑founder M Warrick from Fight Health Insurance, that thing was helping their friends and loved ones get the healthcare they need without the worry of financial ruin.

Once you find that thing—the one you love and care about—Panchadsaram says:

“You should try applying AI to an issue you care about. Challenge yourself. Pick any topic and throw it at the AI that exists today. Push yourself to see if this can help you think about how you want to have an impact on the world.”

When I spoke with Holden Karau about her experience creating Fight Health Insurance, she echoed Panchadsaram’s sentiment:

“It’s nice to be able to look at the places where you can make [AI] actually do something you care about or make the world a better place—rather than just, ‘Cool, we can do the same thing we did before but 1 % faster,’ right?”

For the everyday individual, picking something you care about and fighting for it is, realistically, one of the few ways we can make a dent in the bad.

“The resistance to the bad things happening doesn’t need perfection. It needs a lot of people doing a lot of small things.”
— Holden Karau

But don’t let the word “small” undersell the importance of doing this kind of work—or how much effort will have to go into it. Karau warns that for the individual trying to do good in their daily life, burnout comes easily:

“I can see people swinging when they do get involved. They swing too hard, just making it their all, and then they burn out. … [The burnout] makes sense and it happens. So find the thing that gives you energy instead of taking energy from you. Work on that. But also don’t let it be your whole life. It doesn’t have to be your whole life.”

The truth is, doing good with AI—or rather, doing good full stop—is not about perfection. It’s also not about solving every problem, everywhere, all at once. We don’t need to try to make the world a utopia in order to make it better. In my conversations and research for this piece, I realized the people doing the most good are the ones who are able to focus on one challenge well, whether it be appealing health‑insurance denials or improving quality control in textile manufacturing. Do‑goodery should not be inaccessible or insurmountable.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as looking right in front of you:

“Look at the people on your block or the people in your building and say, ‘Okay, are they safe? What can I do to help them?’”
— Holden Karau

And while it may seem small, it is the collection of all the small goods we do that can offset the bad happening in the world. It’s in these little ways that you and I, the do‑gooders of the world, can have victory over malicious, powerful actors. As Holden Karau told me:

“That’s not going to change the whole world, but it’s going to change someone’s world, and that matters a huge amount.”