Inclusive Artificial Intelligence: Putting people at the center of data-driven decisions

Over the last five years, IDinsight has been evolving how it uses data science to support partners’ decision-making. For example, IDinsight has worked with a non-governmental partner in India to build, test, and refine models to predict where out-of-school girls are to serve them more cost- effectively. We have provided training data for satellite imagery models predicting crop types and boundaries in India. We have worked with a government partner in Africa as they developed an ML model to predict households’ ability to pay for contributions to a national insurance scheme. In each case, we strive to improve the reliability and equity of partners’ models to inform decisions that directly affect people’s lives and well-being.

For partners interested in using machine learning, IDinsight can support the entire life cycle of model development and deployment – from identifying the problem, developing, testing, and refining the model to evaluating the impact of its implementation (see Figure 1). This note focuses on how IDinsight’s DataDelta and Data Science teams can help collect and use data to create and maintain equitable machine learning models (see yellow triangles in Figure 1).