Ways to use Artificial Intelligence to accelerate life and work in the Social Sectors

OpenArt photo created with promt: "picture of humanitarians in the USA using AI to assess a disaster."

Artificial Intelligence is the talk of the town in my humanitarian response world.  The discussion comes across as polarized to the far ends of the spectrum. The optimist camp looks at the potential societal benefits and touts an upcoming productivity and positive revolution. The pessimists talk about the machines taking over our lives, amplifying bias and ruining the world that we know. 

I’m still working my way up the learning curve on these fascinating issues, but I wanted to share a few AI use cases that I’ve developed for myself and my work that may be helpful to my fellow Social Sector workers. I use Google Gemini as my primary AI tool, and have experimented with OpenAI’s ChatGTP. 

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Rough drafts of documents & project plans: A detailed team planning process yielded a project plan for a new information technology system. I asked AI to design its own project plan and was able to compare our version to the AI version. We had forgotten a compliance and feasibility survey that we were able to add to the final version. I’ll also use AI to write generic background information that I can insert into documents. 

Language Translation: Translating my English emails into French. I can communicate tolerably well in spoken French but the written word is more challenging for me. The Google Translate function is not perfect, but is effective for simple sentences and helps get a solid first draft with all the special characters and close to correct syntax & spelling that I can adjust and send. 

Brainstorming: Asking AI a question about how to solve a problem like humanitarian data interoperability will not solve the problem, but will give you a set of ideas to react to and accelerate your process. 

Background research: Basic and general research on a new country that you are visiting. I have a list of favorite sources for learning about a new country. I can use AI as a new aggregated source alongside the traditional ways of learning about a new place ahead of the trip. 

Writing the first draft of a professional reference or evaluation: AI can speed up this task with a generic output that makes it possible to add personal touches. This reduces the mental and time cost of this task. Everyone wins. 

Virtual personal assistant: Apple’s Siri helps with tasks like scheduling appointments, sending emails, and setting reminders / timers. This takes out a small part of the friction of administrative clicks and tasks that helps me focus on bigger picture items. 

Food Macro tracking: I’m trying to understand how many calories I consume per day and what percentage of those calories are carbs, protein and fat. There are many available apps, but it's hard to tell which one is worthwhile and many charge a monthly fee with more features then I need. I’m asking AI to tell me the calories and macro breakdown of each meal I eat, and then entering it into a spreadsheet

Packing lists: Ask AI to write out a packing list to go camping at the beach with surf and biking equipment. The packing list will not be comprehensive but it is an outline you can react to and build out. 

Writing practice tests for the kid’s studying: AI can generate study questions and practice test questions with the answers. This is a fun way to spice up the study session with the kids. 

What I would like AI to be able to help me do:

• Plan a complete end-to-end family trip that includes airfare, activities, meals and costs. 
• Plan all parts of a birthday and anniversary party for 200 people. 
• Have more detailed and specific immediate responses rather than going through lengthy refining questions.
• Analyze and optimize my schedule automatically.
• Move the schedule around throughout the week to compensate for my energy levels and ability to produce good work at various points in the day. 
• Shine some light on my blind spots to bring up things that I might be missing in work and life. 

Making it work for you
What are you using AI for and how can I experiment with other relevant way to use this technology? Hit me up and let me know your learnings. 
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