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- [00:03]
Narrator
Welcome to Humanitarian Frontiers in AI, the podcast series where innovation meets impact. In each episode, we dive deep into how artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of humanitarian work. From enhancing crisis response to making aid delivery smarter and more effective, AI is opening new doors in the way we support communities in need. In this series, hosts Chris Hoffman and Nassim Motelaby bring you thought leaders from academia and the tech industry to discuss not only the vast opportunities AI offers, but also the ethical considerations and risks we all must navigate. Join them on this journey as they explore AI's potential to transform lives and address humanity's most pressing challenges.
- [00:48]
Chris Hoffman
Hey, Naseem. Welcome back. This is our 10th and final episode of Humanitarian Frontiers in AI. How are you feeling?
- [00:57]
Nassim Motelaby
Hi, Chris. Wow, it's been such an amazing journey and I'm happy that I was part of this experience. Thank you so much for having me as a co host. Of course. I'm also kind of sad this is the last episode.
- [01:12]
Chris Hoffman
No, I know how you feel. I'm really sad too. I mean, we've met some pretty amazing people from the first episode on. It has just been amazing, amazing guests to share the space with you and I feel like we've learned a lot, or at least I have. You're the expert in the field, I'm the jack of all trades sitting over here. But I definitely learned a lot throughout the process and. And it also changed a little bit of my worldview on certain things, on the practicalities and the step by step processes that we need to take to do this. And I'd be remiss, or we'd be remiss to not mention Innovation Norway one last time and say a big thank you to them for allowing this to happen and the team there, because without them, obviously this wouldn't have come to fruition. And at the same time, having the support of such an innovative donor, I think has really allowed this conversation to move ahead versus just kind of stagnate as sometimes it happens in our sector. Right. And this allows it to. It gives it space, I think, and that's been great.
- [02:10]
Nassim Motelaby
Yes. Especially the donor's role in supporting conversations around AI is critical, but the conversation around innovation and what is the positioning of AI in innovation programs? I think this is in itself a very fascinating topic and I'm so glad that we had the chance to have these discussions in this podcast. Our donor is also very keen on having different voices involved and I think having that flexibility to showcase the diversity of opinions, diversity of expertise and being able to actually bring that to the table. I Think that was a very amazing experience that we were able to showcase to our audience.
- [03:00]
Chris Hoffman
That's just starting off with one of the big things that happened in the middle of this podcast, right? Which was the kind of the collapse of the donor sphere in certain ways and then the uptake of the conversation on AI in this space as well. So the whole industry has had to shift, continues to shift. I don't think the boat has already righted itself yet. I think we've still got a long way to go. But, but I do find that our conversations were really timely for what is happening. And that brings me to a question for you, because I've been thinking about it a lot. And from the podcast we have what we talk about, right? But we also have how we work, right? In our work, utilizing AI in our work. And from your perspective, I mean, we've been on this journey for about a year and it's been one of the most tumultuous years in recent history for many, many reasons, but least of all because of what's been happening in the sector. And what are you seeing in 25 and in 26? What's going to be the low hanging fruit where organizations are really going to latch on to AI and its use?
- [04:04]
Nassim Motelaby
So I'm going to just talk to my experience in the past year and the changes I observed so far and perhaps how that would lead into the next year's progress or advancements or changes per se. What I experienced was at least in our sector, right? I'm not talking about AI market and the global trends, but in our sector, what I recognized that first it was that, okay, what is this AI? What is this thing that everyone is talking about and those who didn't even use it and were not even interested to use it because they were caught by all the dystopian media and like this hype around it, Even they, they were curious to know, what is this AI? How is it going to impact their jobs? I think that question of the impact on your job and in your industry was the most major question. And a lot of us were just sitting in standby waiting to see, okay, how is it going to be integrated in our workflow? Some of us were scared, some of us were excited because we were already working with some AI functions, but essentially we're just waiting to be consumers of this product, right?
- [05:20]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah.
- [05:21]
Nassim Motelaby
But what I experienced in this journey was that a lot of those consumers, those who are not directly involved in the AI conversation, they became interested to learn about AI and learn about how to effectively use AI tools or even create some AI solutions. Those who are more technical or had an interest in technology, you see that they're ahead. They're already learning about different solutions, let's say copilot or seeing what is this function, their productivity, everyday productivity tool. So this is so far the past year. And those who are interested in governance, in advocacy and communication, they were also involved in this. Okay, let's talk about AI. I think we're progressing into now having a population of people in our sector who are moving towards working with AI more effectively and upskilling. So the upskilling has not happened to its fullest capacity, but we see that transition happening and we see people who are moving within their even sector, but from not so technical roles into AI roles. And I think this is something that is affecting a lot of us in this industry. And maybe this is something I want to ask you in return, but what I'm seeing with like Dodge, with these conversations around efficiency and efficiency gains, there is a lot of discussion around how is AI bringing that efficiency. And that also is creating this challenge for people who are afraid of losing their job and their job security is at risk. So now we see a lot of those people are actually starting to upscale and start to use AI so they can actually be ahead of the curve and create job security in the future. I don't know what you think, but this is kind of my overall perspective around AI in our sector at least.
- [07:32]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah. So if I take even from November to now and talking to people at certain NGOs where there was we are not going to touch AI in November and now they're like, okay, Chris, what do we do? Where would it work for us so we can get the conversation moving? So I feel like there's a huge sense of urgenc around upskilling and up knowledging or if you want to call it that for people around this space. I also feel like there's like in any industry with any technology that's coming in, there's a lot of push and pull. Right. And that push and pull can sometimes delay the process and the growth while it's needed, you know, it's always needed. I don't think we have. Organizations don't have the processes yet, even with other technologies, all the way down to a CRM, they don't have the requisite process to deal with technology in a sector that's predominantly face to face human interaction. And so this disruption I think will be the biggest disruption in the way that humanitarian actors work in the future. But I do see the same issues popping up that have always been around. We had the blockchain bubble, we want to call it. We had the app bubble before that. Now blockchain is coming back into fashion because crypto is doing really well. And now we have the coins that are more stable to utilize apps because more smartphones are available in many places are coming back into fashion and. But how do we not make those same mistakes? And I think that organizations are going to struggle without having the process right to move it ahead. I give one example of one organization that I was speaking to and they were like, okay, we want to use AI, we want to do this. I mean, it's a great problem that they identified. There are technological fixes for that problem that we work together to identify. But then I asked them about the business model. How is this going to work? And these conversations around business model is so foreign because first of all, it's got the word business in it, right? So they firstly, okay, making money. What do you mean? No, how do you get it to be self sustaining, right? How do you create these self sustaining models? And so there's still a lexicon that's missing in the humanitarian space that I think is, well, one is going to be the downfall of any technology implementation, but B, showcases the direct need for partnerships. And you know, we talked about this throughout the podcast with a number of our folks because we had both private sector and third sector nonprofit folks in the calls. And that idea of partnerships is came out really strongly to me. I mean, look, don't try to build a wheel if you aren't a wheel manufacturer, right? So what do you think about how to grow these partnerships better? Because you mentioned it earlier, right? This idea that there is a reticence to work with the private sector because there is this nefarious kind of conversation happening in the media about Those that implement AI, whether it's OpenAI, whether it's Palantir, whether it's Meta, whether it's X, all of these things. How are you, what's your thinking around these partnerships? How are we going to be able to make sure that these partnerships are going to be viable and going to work and that organization are going to be able to utilize them in this kind of strange space we have.
- [10:45]
Nassim Motelaby
I'm so glad you brought this up because I had it in my notes. I was like in this last episode, I'm definitely going to talk about the business model, right? And I'm so glad you mentioned it because I've been in so many Conversations these days on AI and the humanitarian sector and the private public partnerships. And what I'm seeing is the gap is really that business model for us in the humanitarian sector. And that is the reason a lot of the initiatives that we invest in doesn't become a sustainable investment. The applications, the blockchain, whatever technology we've invested in the past has brought a level of excitement. And we've had many initiatives and kind of these small investments going to different workflows and work streams, but you don't see it become a sustainable investment. And the investment, what I mean by that, I think that generally has to be defined. Right. Because from my interactions with private sector, I hear that there is not a business case in the humanitarian sector for private companies. And I kind of understand that. But the problem is that a lot of times we are seen as philanthropic entity and private sector is interested to just support us in a philanthropic way. So it becomes kind of a donation than an investment.
- [12:16]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah.
- [12:17]
Nassim Motelaby
So then we in the humanitarian sector need to figure out what is the business case that we want to do and what is our return on investment. We got a donation and then we have to figure it out. And I don't think we do that effectively. And we can't do it given the current private sector philanthropic AI for good kind of thinking because we see that those partnerships, a lot of times they don't essentially don't provide much other than the little stream of donation that they are allocating to us. Right. So I think to change what the business model is also to change our positioning, especially with technology from a philanthropic perspective into something that is really developing a business case and making sure that whatever we're doing will have an impact and is driven by value. But now I think we had this discussion that the return on investment or the IRI was a difficult one in one of our episodes. And really measuring that, measuring the cost benefit is very difficult in our sector. Let's make it more tangible. Right. Let's talk about impact and return on the money that we putting in and what drives the private sector, which is essentially financial returns. So they treat us as if they are selling a product to us. Right. So how can we change that? So I think working from that perspective, we could actually think a little bit about the challenges on our engagement with partners. One very interesting conversation that I'm hearing. And you know me, Chris, I'm an advocate for localization. I always talk about context specific work and really supporting community driven technologies. But we often, when it comes to a business model in the humanitarian sector. And then we bring in the localization perspective. We often put localization and scalability side to side. Right. And that means that we want something to be a localized product. Right? We want something to be driven by the local community and create value in the local context, but then we also want it to be scalable. I think these two conversations are in conflict with one another. Because if we're going for scalability, as in global scalability, to drive business value and bring return on investments, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be the most effective localized solution. So I think the business model should also be localized. Right? So how can we create localized technologies and localized business models that could drive value? I'm just challenged with this idea of like, scale scalability because as organizations like us, we work on a global field and when we speak of scalability, to us is that, how is it replicable? Can we generalize this? Can we maximize the return on investment? But actually, what we should be looking at is scalability within a local context in itself, because that would be also a win.
- [15:33]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah, I mean, I agree. And that is a constant struggle, right? Because then it gets down to the economics and it gets into the economics of doing something small in a lot of different places versus doing something big. Right. That's always a difficult, difficult conversation. But I think, I think there are pathways for these types of things. I think that the idea, especially in the AI space, of being able to create open source. I'm always on the fence on open source, depending on what it is. Right. But I think that by creating communities around certain topics that are based on technology and based on some sort of systemic requirement, systemic need that translates to many places while being different in many places, whether it be language, whether it be currency, whether it be geography, whether it be crisis, that there is an opportunity to start to see how to build out this model of. Okay, look, what we're going to do here at Organization X, we're going to make an effort to say that whatever we build, we will make it publicly available. Right? And we will advertise it out and make sure that many different people from Myanmar to Ecuador know that this is there. And if they want to take it forward and use it and contextualize it in their context, now, we're going to do it that way. And while that conversation is happening, I think again, the governance around those types of things is foreign to organizations. So even as we might have the pathways, we still don't have the infrastructure because we can talk about it all the time. People talk about open source in this sector constantly, but nobody talks about governance. And once something goes out, right, it has to be managed in its own way and whether it has to be making sure that it's running, making sure that the code's up to date, making sure that the versioning is up to date, all those things. And so when you look at strong open source tools, they have a very strong community around them. And I don't think that the sector is built for that. I think it is a requirement that we will come head to head with in the future. But again, I agree with you on the scale and the impact and I think. But though there are still pathways to get through that. And that kind of though brings me to the other side of things because we're talking right now, you and I are talking about beneficiary, what we call beneficiary facing technologies. Right. But then when we look at the internal side of things, right, the organizational pieces and there are lots of examples of current implementation that's happening, but also a lot of gaps and slow, it's a slow moving train, this one for doing this. And going back to your point on partnerships, I mean to me that seems like the easiest way to create a partnership because there's shared value. A, a potential partner comes in and provides a service internally that an organization would need. B, the organization buys that service and let's, it doesn't have to be pro bono. Let's talk about at a discounted NGO kind of rate. It's not at the market rate comes in. And now they've got this tool and yes, they're a bit locked into this thing, but this thing needs to be locked in because you can't switch models or providers after you've trained a model on this. Right. And so those types of things I see as being the lowest hanging fruit for organizations to really create these meaningful partnerships that then move on to the beneficiary facing piece. Right. It's kind of like when I started in the sector, there were people that didn't want to have a mobile phone. Like only certain people in the organization were allowed to have a mobile phone, right. So going from there to now doing digital technologies on the mobile phone for beneficiaries, right. That's a huge jump over a 25 year period. And so maybe we need this step change process versus doing both at once. Maybe I know we need to do both at once, but you know what I mean.
- [19:16]
Nassim Motelaby
You just mentioned many topics. I think each of them, I don't Think we actually talked about open source much during the episodes because so you mentioned processes and our organizational or really sectoral readiness for AI or anything, any technology solution really. And then you also mentioned the partnerships element. Right. And then you also mentioned the open source. So I'm going to briefly just talk about some of the challenges that we're facing. Let's start from the process. Right. So which ties into that partnership element that you mentioned when it comes to procurement versus partnership and then receiving type of quote unquote free services that would bring an investment for the company that is the provider? Essentially that's a conflict of interest. Right. For a lot of UN based organizations and I'm sure for a lot of humanitarian organizations at large. So we are aware that usually whatever free quote unquote service that is being provided could end up as an investment. Right. Or at cost for an organization.
- [20:31]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah.
- [20:32]
Nassim Motelaby
So this is the challenge we face when it comes to our internal capacity building, even starting from this low hanging fruit. It sounds ideal, but our processes are not in place to actually benefit from some of these opportunities. But also understandably so because of that locking or because of the risks that it could present to us, the lack of competition in our sector. That's why we often play catch up, because we don't have the necessarily the power in this business relationship. Right. So this is while our data and our use cases. Right. And our context is value driven and it provides a lot of value to the private sector. Right. So I think considering the challenges that we discussed, the value of our data and also sensitivities around it, it's very important when it comes to these partnerships. So the processes are in place to protect the beneficiaries and protect the humanitarian sector as a priority. And it's not set for business innovation or technology innovation. So I think creating a new way of working I think is very critical in this space if we want to make progress on the open source. It's a very interesting topic and I absolutely agree with you. It's a governance issue. There are many, many open source tools, platforms that brings the community together. There are people who are willing to provide their time and the tool that they created for you to work on and build upon. The problem is again the trust. I don't trust that if it's going to work and I also have to spend more money and energy into making sure that this open source solution is going to work for me. So open source doesn't necessarily mean zero cost for organizations.
- [22:34]
Chris Hoffman
100%.
- [22:34]
Nassim Motelaby
Exactly. And I think sometimes we forget that that open source actually may cost more. And we see a lot of different foundations or communities of practice that come up with these open source business models again. And they say, okay, how can we actually create a business open source community that is funded? Maybe it's a unity, I don't know, union or anything that they come up with. And that could drive value for different humanitarian organizations. That could work. But as long as we don't have a sense, especially for the humanitarian sector, I don't know where to go as the go to open source hub that I would say it has the governance model that is aligned with my values, with the humanitarian principles and it's been audited. Right. And I would hope that we're going to reach there. But a lot of the conversations we are having so far is about AI governance. And when it comes to AI governance, it forgets the system and forgets the project and the community itself. I'll stop here, but I just was reading the news today about how AI and LLMs risk and hallucinations create a package theft. And I don't know if you've heard of package threats. So they can actually manipulate open source packages and that will create a risk for your local computer or your local data. So you see that there is also this risk that is coming from AI that is actually threatening the open source packages and community.
- [24:17]
Chris Hoffman
So then, yeah, because now you've got GitHub, right? And you can do all the coding with AI directly in GitHub. And so if those things have backdoors that are put in there that you're like, oh, okay, this is great code. And then it's got a backdoor and nobody knows about it. Well, okay, more dystopian than I was ready for this morning, but that's a scary thought for sure. But I agree. So, so cost, cost came up so many times in our podcast right around the cost of AI and what you just said. And then thinking about cost, one thing that comes to my mind is the idea that many organizations are still trying to apply their traditional ways of working to technology. And the example that I give is building out a chatbot in a simple facilitated IVR chatbot, not even AI driven. And you know, just question, answer, question, answer, question answered. And organizations want to take their current paper form, their paper survey and they just then put it into Kobo toolbox or they put it into something else. They're like, okay. And then they wonder why the answers aren't very robust. Right? They're not able to get that information that they really require what they don't know already. Right. Instead it's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. They ask the questions that they know the answers to already. And the thing is, is that that applic taking a paper survey and just putting it digitally and expecting to have similar answers is not a good assumption, I don't think. I think you need to change the way that you ask the question because when you ask it digitally, people are in a different space, they're interacting differently than they are face to face with somebody. And so this same thing with AI, I think unfortunately, a little bit, just alluding to a little bit of what you said, and I don't want to change your words, but this idea of AI governance, people talk about AI governance, right? Are they just looking at it from the governance standpoint of how they govern things already, how they govern different things in the sector and are they looking at it differently? And I don't think that they are. I think that it clouds the mind. So when it comes to cost, then it clouds the mind because they look at costing for technology the same as they look at costing for a bucket. Right. And I feel like that's missing the same thing with the open source conversation that you were saying. And I mean, I guess I want to ask what do you really feel is going to be the answer to this? Is it a staffing issue, is it an upskilling issue? How is the tide going to turn to where organizations are actually going to be able to think differently around technology and then start to be able to innovate around it instead of thinking about where they are today and technology? Because I feel like it's 10 years in the field now I've got this new technology, let me see how to apply it to the things I did 10 years ago versus 10 years ahead. What do I want this technology to be doing for people?
- [26:50]
Nassim Motelaby
That's a good question and I guess I would like to hear your own thoughts about this. To be honest, I would actually turn the table a little bit. It is somewhat on us in the humanitarian sector to be more involved in the technology kind of world, let's say on a business level. And instead of talking about the reason I mentioned the governance was that either we want to benchmark AI models or want to create control mechanisms, AI development, or we want to totally say, okay, the humanitarian principles are set. So we want to be technology agnostic for protection, period. Safety, security, rights. Absolutely understandable, critical. But avoiding the technology doesn't mean that it will bring protection. Controlling the technology doesn't necessarily mean that we can bring protection. So I think we need to drive the conversation. Right. And our engagement with the technology industry generally has to change. So instead of us trying to just control it or create governing mechanisms, I think we need to actually make our needs, make our sector very communicate what we do and what we need in this sector. Right. I don't think the technology industry, we're essentially an afterthought.
- [28:21]
Chris Hoffman
Right.
- [28:22]
Nassim Motelaby
The tech industry doesn't come out and say, I want to respond to Y and Z problems. In the humanitarian sector, we've only gone as far as like, let's say climate shocks and disaster. And that's mostly because it's a byproduct of other industries like weather prediction. Right?
- [28:43]
Chris Hoffman
Yep.
- [28:44]
Nassim Motelaby
Or military government.
- [28:45]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah, exactly.
- [28:46]
Nassim Motelaby
Yeah, government. So how can we make our sector a priority when it comes to the technology industry? And that's what my answer was to your question. I was like, I don't think we need to necessarily change what we do, but one of the critical changes that we need to make in the way of working is to actually change our engagement with the technology sector.
- [29:11]
Chris Hoffman
Right. And so public private partnerships, Right. Every organization has the PPP person, you know, or people in there, and 90% of them, I would say are looking for freebies or bigger discounts. Right. They're not really partnership building, they're just looking for how do we do things cheaper.
- [29:30]
Nassim Motelaby
Exactly.
- [29:31]
Chris Hoffman
And I think that that's an enormous gap is how to create these partnerships. And to Innovation Norway's credit, and not mentioning them because they fund this podcast, but mentioning them because of the process that they use, which I truly believe in, which is this idea that if they give money for their scaling grants, it has to be buttressed by having money from the private sector as well. With the idea, and the conversation always happens in these projects of okay, if we build this product and it works, there will be a lock in for a period of time because now we want to test the product and make sure that it works. And so it's a time frame issue. I think with technology at the scale that we're talking about and the potential impact we need to expand our timescales as a sector to say, okay, look, if we're going to do an innovation project, we got to lock in for like three years and then we can go out and do it to tender if we need to. Most likely the company will still win it because they've been doing it for three years with us, unless they've really created a problem. But it is the idea of how do we allow procurement to be flexible enough to allow these partnerships to come to fruition? So that's one, two is the public private partnerships people, I think need to switch their communication. The way that they communicate to people, the way that they establish these, these partnerships is number two. Number three for me is I think the field based voice needs to rise up a bit more because their ability to identify problems is much better than us sitting at a headquarters level. Right. In many ways now we can see some problems, right. But we're not really seeing the nitty gritty. And that's why it's always a struggle in the humanitarian sector, because everybody's situation is different. Right. If you talk to one person in Goma and you talk to one person in Nairobi and you talk about cash programming, they're talking about implementing it in completely different ways because the context is very different, whereas the baseline might be relatively the same. But how do we allow these voices to coalesce into a point of where headquarters understands the problem concretely enough that then as they create these public private partnerships with larger tech organizations, for example, or local tech organizations, which could be, I think much more beneficial to do at the country level. It allows those conversations to be more fortuitous for everybody. Right. Again, shared value, because you still got to pay. I think humanitarian organizations still need to turn around and understand the cost of technology and that there has to be payment for it and then those structures need to amend themselves to allow for those payments to be regularized.
- [31:55]
Nassim Motelaby
Yeah, I mean the humanitarian organizations, one of the main values that they bring is their access. Right. To the local community. And with that I should also flag that sometimes I use humanitarian organizations, but I really mean international organizations.
- [32:13]
Chris Hoffman
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:14]
Nassim Motelaby
And I think that's actually one of the issues, the gap between humanitarian development sector still to this date, because we just think that our mandates are completely different and we cannot work in one way or another because of our mandate. And all I'm thinking is like, like majority of our humanitarian situations in the world are protracted. Right. So with that thinking about building community based business cases or local business cases that involves different stakeholders from governments to local startups to local communities to international banks and international organizations, how can we actually create a system which I think has happened before, but how can we do it more effectively where localization is still a top down concept, let's say, how can we make it happen for the business model and the economies that we're working in as a facilitator? That's what I'm trying To get at we are bringing the access and we can bring that international investment. But honestly, ultimately has to work for that government and the local community based on their needs. Still to this day, we're talking about LLMs and AI as a foreign technology that we're going to bring to the community because they can benefit from it. And we want to close the digital gap, the information gap, all of this, but we still haven't figured out if that's what the community wants. And I think this is a philosophical question at large. Right. Because I think we still haven't figured out as a community whether technology is going to bring value or going to be exploitative in that situation. So it's again, a philosophical question, and I always ask this. But from your perspective, Chris, what do you think? I think this is a negative perspective that I'm bringing in a little bit on the dystopian side. But what do you think when it comes to creating local economies around technology?
- [34:16]
Chris Hoffman
I think that it's an important piece to a much larger puzzle. And the reason why I say that is because I believe that the humanitarian system was set up with one mindset. Right. And that mindset was that we are here to help those that cannot help themselves. That kind of mindset is there. Right. And that mindset still permeates through a lot of the work that we do. Whereas I think the important piece is here is that it shouldn't be that. Right. We should be a facilitator. And humanitarian organizations were there because governments weren't able to address the needs of their populations right. At the time. And so organizations would come in and support governments. Right. That's why you have to be invited by a government to go into a disaster or whatever else to support the government to do that. But once the support to the government comes through, it all kind of stops and then everybody does what they're supposed to do on the ground and everything happens. But. But there's no connection really to the government and then therefore very little connection to the administrative structures that the government runs, the districts and the states and the provinces and things like that. And so we tend to keep ourselves back from that. And until that shift happens, I'm not sure that organizations will do anything differently than what they do today. The shift has to happen where problem identification, facilitation, as you said, bringing in investment, as you call it, from the top down, but then doing it in the way that the community wants it. And organizations just aren't set up to do that. Right. I mean, obviously we're maybe I'm mixing a little bit the development side of things and the humanitarian side of things as well. But when it comes to life saving activities, I think that's, you know, Humanitarian 101. But now we're getting into this nexus phase, this time of fragility where things have stabilized. And then you have to ask yourself the question, do I pull out as a humanitarian organization or do I stay and bring through the rest of the journey through fragility into stability? And I just don't think organizations yet. I know the discussion's huge, but I just don't think organizations yet are able to pivot very well in that space. I think there are organizations that are very good at life saving work. I think that there are organizations that are very good at development work. I think that still the discussions, while they've been going on for many years, I think the issue of the in between is one of the most difficult stumbling blocks that we have to building out the localization agenda.
- [36:38]
Nassim Motelaby
Yeah, I mentioned this because of our conversation on business model. Right. I think you cannot have a sustainable business model if you're not considering the development and the long term investment in a fragile context. Right. And I think this is actually one of our biggest challenges in this sector.
- [36:59]
Chris Hoffman
I mean the question like is always, who do you hand it over to? Right. In a fragile context, yes.
- [37:06]
Nassim Motelaby
That shouldn't, honestly, in an ideal world, that shouldn't be even the question. The question, it should be clear. It's the community, it's the people. If we want to always be responsible or keep ourselves in this loop, it's, I mean there, it's going to be a challenge, but there's always like this, what do you call it? There's a double edged sword, but it's like a whole hot and cold situation with this. There are people who are like, okay, humanitarians are absolutely just facilitators. And then they just have to wash their hands off of a situation and leave and say goodbye. And then there are those who are like, no, we need to be actively involved from 0 to 100, all of that. So I think this also pertains to AI. Right. So I still think that the AI conversation organizations are still thinking of themselves as a critical enabler, but we don't have a plan yet on how to enable the communities and the local context. I say all of this thinking that majority of our listeners know what we're talking about and probably they're like, okay, the same old, same old. But I recognize that our podcast has a audience of non humanitarians and an audience of private sector who would be listening to this. And this is completely new to them. And I'm just hoping that some of this conversation resonates with them and they can pick it up and just maybe see what they can do on their end in the private sector to enable humanitarian AI. So, yeah, I don't know, Chris, if you've had conversations outside of our humanitarian network, I'm sure you have. You have a huge network of people, how they receive these conversations. But it's definitely been interesting for me to see the reactions we get from private sector folks.
- [38:59]
Chris Hoffman
Me too. I absolutely agree with you. It's. I mean, even just in the last episode that we did, when we start talking about these types of issues with tech partners, they're still looking at humanitarian organizations as customers. Right. They feel like it's the same sales cycle that they need to engage in and et cetera. And it is the third sector. It's a different sector, it's a different place to work, it's a different environment. It has a lot of different hurdles to overcome. And so I think it's super important, this advocacy piece that you talk about, but I think, again, I think organizations can speak about it. I just think that they don't because of the way that we engage with technologists and technology companies. Right. So I think, hopefully, I truly hope that as more and more people listen to the podcast, and especially private sector folks as they listen to the podcast, they're able to really understand a bit more about how we work in the humanitarian sector and our needs and our struggles and to help us with that. But, I mean, Nasim, it's sad to say goodbye, but it's not goodbye. It's until next time. Right? Is that how we do this?
- [40:03]
Nassim Motelaby
Definitely. I think there's a lot of other topics we should bring forth. I think there is a lot of technologies that are coming about and we are happy to keep the conversation alive on the side if anyone wants to reach out. We're always happy to engage, but looking forward to future collaborations with Ukrest. This has been such an amazing experience.
- [40:26]
Chris Hoffman
No, you too, Naseem. I have had such a great time and we still have drones and robots and agentic AI and everything else to talk about. Blockchain, crypto, there's lots of stuff out there that we could rap about. So it's been a great pleasure. Thank you so much for agreeing to join with me on this journey. And it's been a real pleasure.
- [40:44]
Nassim Motelaby
Absolutely. I hope this was a good humanitarian AI. 101 for our listeners from diverse backgrounds. So thank you.
- [40:53]
Chris Hoffman
Thank you so much, Naseem. And thanks to Innovation Norway. Thanks to all of our guests over these last few months. And this is Humanitarian Futures in AI signing off. So thank you.
- [41:04]
Nassim Motelaby
Bye.
- [41:06]
Narrator
Thank you for joining us on Humanitarian Frontiers in AI. We hope today's conversation gave you new insights into how AI is transforming humanitarian efforts and the steps we need to take to ensure it's the done ethically and effectively. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and stay tuned for more discussions with leaders and innovators at the intersection of technology and humanitarian work. Together, we're exploring how AI can bring real change to communities in need. Keep pushing the frontiers of possibility.