Neha Bajwa from Neo4j Unveils New Tools to Build, Test, and Deploy AI Agents
Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In daily five-minute flashpods we pass the mic to humanitarian experts and technology pioneers, to hear about new projects, events, and perspectives on topics of importance to the humanitarian community.
In this flashpod, Neha Bajwa, Vice President of Product Marketing at Neo4j, joins Humanitarian AI Today producer Brent Phillips to discuss Neo4j’s major plans to support agentic AI systems that will directly benefit nonprofits and humanitarian organizations. Neo4j is the world’s leading graph intelligence platform for AI systems, and the company’s two new tools, Neo4j Aura Agent and the Model Context Protocol Server for Neo4j, will address critical development obstacles and help organizations rapidly build, test, and deploy AI agents. They also discuss Neo4j’s Graphs for Good program and Neo4j’s upcoming “NODES” developer conference, which is the biggest graph community gathering dedicated to applications, data intelligence, knowledge graphs, and AI.
Substack notes: https://humanitarianaitoday.substack.com/p/neha-bajwa-from-neo4j-unveils-new
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Lindsey Moore on Agentic AI, Transformative Philanthropy and Investing in Humanitarian AI
Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In daily five-minute flashpods we pass the mic to humanitarian experts and technology pioneers, to hear about new projects, events, and perspectives on topics of importance to the humanitarian community.
In this flashpod, Lindsey Moore, Founder and CEO of DevelopMetrics, joins Humanitarian AI Today producer Brent Phillips to talk about agentic AI and bold new funding initiatives like Humanity AI. According to Humanity AI’s website, the coalition is co-chaired by Omidyar Network and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Its founding members include the Doris Duke Foundation, Ford Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Kapor Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Over five-years, the coalition plans to dedicate $500M towards making sure people and communities beyond Silicon Valley have a stake in the future of artificial intelligence establishing an AI future where people and communities can flourish.
Lindsey Moore offers a grounded perspective on the current state of AI in the humanitarian sector. She observes that despite industry buzz, most organizations are not yet experimenting with agentic AI. Instead, they are focusing on more foundational challenges, such as organizing their data and building domain-specific large language models that can grasp the unique context and terminology of their work. Discussing the Humanity AI initiative, Lindsey and Brent express hope that such bold new funding can, with an informed understanding of the sector, help offset the destructive impact of recent aid funding cuts. These cuts disrupted foundational AI capacity-building that was being carried out by established organizations with deep domain experience, destroying numerous projects and dismantling teams behind them. They make a compelling case for funders to reinvest in these organizations and their important work to prevent hard-won gains from being lost and to scale their forward momentum.
The conversation serves as a call to action, emphasizing that for initiatives like Humanity AI to be truly transformative, they must go beyond traditional philanthropy. This means proactively identifying and engaging with the humanitarian community's own AI leaders, reforming conventional cyclic grant solicitation and grant-making processes that too often overlook real sector innovators and builders, and boldly forming new partnerships that make them accessible and open to input, rather than insulated behind institutional firewalls.
Substack notes: https://humanitarianaitoday.substack.com/p/lindsey-moore-from-developmetrics
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Chelsea McMurray on AI Security and the Threat Landscape Facing Humanitarian Actors
Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In daily five-minute flashpods we pass the mic to humanitarian experts and technology pioneers, to hear about new projects, events, and perspectives on topics of importance to the humanitarian community.
In this flashpod, Chelsea McMurray, founder of the AI security startup Dorcha, joins Humanitarian AI Today producer Brent Phillips to discuss international human rights law, AI security, and the threat landscape facing humanitarian actors. They begin with Chelsea’s background in human rights law and the recent disregard for international norms that should underpin ethical AI governance.
The casual conversation then pivots to AI security and the specific threats humanitarian organizations face. Chelsea explains how her startup addresses data privacy vulnerabilities and prompt injection attacks, by giving users greater control over their personal information. Protecting such sensitive data is especially critical in the humanitarian sector, where information leaks can endanger field staff and the vulnerable populations they serve.
Substack notes: https://humanitarianaitoday.substack.com/p/chelsea-mcmurray-on-ai-security-and
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Annie Brown from Humane Intelligence on their Bias Bounty Program
Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In daily five-minute flashpods we pass the mic to humanitarian experts and technology pioneers, to hear about new projects, events, and perspectives on critical topics.
In this flashpod, Annie Brown, a Data Scientist with Humane Intelligence, talks about her team’s Bias Bounty program and how to get involved in an interview with Brent Phillips, Producer of Humanitarian AI Today. They discuss Humane Intelligence's work focusing on collaboratively designing and running rigorous evaluations that make AI systems more accountable, responsible, and fair, their bias bounty program and the strategy behind it as well as touch on how volunteers can get involved and launch their research.
Substack notes: https://humanitarianaitoday.substack.com/p/annie-brown-from-humane-intelligence
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Petya Kangalova Introduces Humanitarian OpenStreetMap’s Tech and Innovation Working Group
Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In daily five-minute flashpods we pass the mic to innovators, researchers and practitioners on the humanitarian front lines, delivering real-time news on how they are building, testing and collaborating on uses of artificial intelligence.
In this flashpod, Petya Kangalova, Technology Partnerships and Engagement Lead with Humanitarian Open Street Map joins Brent Phillips, Humanitarian AI Today podcast Producer, to discuss Humanitarian Open Street Map’s Technology and Innovation Working Group, its monthly working group open discussion sessions and how people can tune-in.
Substack Notes: https://humanitarianaitoday.substack.com/p/petya-kangalova-introduces-humanitarian
Humanitarian AI Today is the leading AI for Good podcast series focusing on humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence. We interview leaders, developers and innovators advancing humanitarian applications of AI from across the tech and humanitarian communities. The series is produced by the Humanitarian AI meetup.com community, linking local groups in Cambridge, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Toronto, Montreal, London, Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Geneva, Zurich, Bangalore, Tel Aviv and Tokyo.
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