A research institute connected to the United Nations has created two AI-powered avatars designed to show people about refugee issues.
404 Media wrote about an experiment conducted by a category on the United Nations University Center for Policy Research that resulted within the creation of two AI agents or avatars — Amina, a fictional woman who fled Sudan and resides in a refugee camp in Chad, and Abdalla, a fictional soldier with the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary force in Sudan.
Users are purported to have the opportunity to seek advice from Amina and Abdalla on the experiment’s website, though I received an error message once I tried to register on Saturday afternoon.
Eduardo Albrecht, a Columbia professor and a senior fellow on the UNU-CPR, told 404 Media that he and his students were “just fooling around with the concept” and never proposing this as an answer for the UN.
A paper summarizing this work suggested that these avatars could eventually be used “to quickly make a case to donors.” Nevertheless, it also noted that many workshop attendees who interacted with the agents responded negatively, for instance saying that refugees “are very able to speaking for themselves in real life.”