Sanders participates in briefing at the UN about CMU-Africa
College of Engineering Dean Bill Sanders, with CMU-Africa student Choukouriyah Arinloye, participated in a briefing about how artificial intelligence can accelerate progress for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Today, College of Engineering Dean Bill Sanders participated in a briefing at the United Nations. He was joined by Carnegie Mellon University Africa student Choukouriyah Arinloye. The event, “Artificial Intelligence for Accelerating Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: Addressing Society’s Greatest Challenges,” was held as part of the 78th United Nations General Assembly and was hosted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Source: College of Engineering
Dean Sanders and Choukouriyah Arinloye at the United Nations briefing
The briefing was attended by foreign ministers, policymakers, academics and researchers, industry leaders from technology companies, AI startups, innovation hubs, civil society organizations working on AI policy, and international organizations. The goal of the event was to discuss how AI systems will help address society’s greatest challenges. Participants, including Sanders and Arinloye, were asked to present demonstrated concrete applications of AI that could advance progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including applications focused on health, education, food security, energy, and climate action.
Source: College of Engineering
Choukouriyah Arinloye with the flag of Benin, her home country
During the event, Sanders presented about the College of Engineering’s location in Kigali, Rwanda. He spoke about how CMU-Africa is building a digital future for the continent through artificial intelligence education and research partnerships. During his presentation he highlighted the Master of Science in Engineering Artificial Intelligence program and the African Engineering and Technology Network.
Arinloye, who is pursuing her master’s degree in information technology, spoke about her experience at CMU-Africa, the work she is doing with AI, and her future goals to use her education to improve economic growth in Africa through geointelligence. Arinloye described a research project she worked on, under the supervision of Moise Busogi, assistant teaching professor at CMU-Africa, which investigated the potential of AI to detect flood patterns in satellite images.
Sanders and Arinloye were joined by representatives from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Inflection AI, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Schmidt Futures.