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Journalists aren’t the only ones getting the silent treatment from the World Food Programme.
Inklings explores how aid works in the wilds of humanitarian hubs, on the front lines of emergency response, or in the dark corners of aid punditry.
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Today: Pointed Palantir questions for WFP, awkward humanitarian partnerships, and AI for Good.
Palantir |
World Food Programme has lots of data. That means people have lots of questions, especially in the age of artificial intelligence and agentic AI. A few datapoints:
- The May cyber-attack that exposed sensitive data belonging to a vast swathe of Gaza’s population.
- WFP’s odd relationship with Palantir, the AI analytics firm and military contractor whose tech helps militaries use data to target.
- And WFP’s plans to leverage what it calls its “secret weapon” – the vast and growing trove of integrated beneficiary and supply chain data from the world’s most pressing emergencies.
WFP has been less than eager to answer queries from us, from some of its humanitarian partners, and even from some donors, we’re told.
But people are still asking questions. At a 30 June forum on AI, data, and food at the WFP’s Rome headquarters, the agency faced pointed comments on Palantir from Sofía Monsalve Suárez, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food.
“The World Food Programme has agreements with Palantir and we don’t know under what conditions, under what terms, and this is a cause for great, great concern,” Monsalve said during her remarks (h/t Tech for Bad, whose recent report critiques the WFP x Palantir collab).
“These contracts and the terms of agreement with these corporations are not publicly disclosed, nor are they discussed in the governing bodies of these United Nations agencies,” she continued.
“The dual nature of some of these corporations, which provide services for both civilian and military uses, generates a new level of conflicts of interest that causes deep concern.”
Monsalve said there must be public debate, risk assessments, and “very clear standards on transparency”. She also said agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are growing dependent on US tech giants like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.
The forum was held by the Committee on World Food Security, an intergovernmental platform that includes the UN food agencies, civil society, Indigenous communities, researchers, the private sector, and others.
The special rapporteur apparently did not get a reply to her questions. Speaking later in the session, she noted “the silence” from WFP on its collaboration with Palantir. She urged ambassadors to “investigate this issue in the governance bodies of the World Food Programme, because I think it is a very serious matter”. WFP’s executive board had just wrapped up one of its three formal sessions of the year, a few days earlier.
Other participants also expressed concern about Palantir.
“We cannot ignore the role that big tech companies like Palantir have in the use of data and digital technologies as a weapon of war and famine,” said Sabrina Masinjila of the Society for International Development. “Therefore, the WFP must re-assess whether embedding the software of a complicit military contractor within their data ecosystem… compromises its mission.”
- What WFP says: We asked WFP to comment on the special rapporteur’s critiques. The agency hasn’t responded to our questions about Palantir or the cyber-attack since 3 June. We also asked FAO for a comment.
AI for Good |
A week of artificial intelligence and information summits have turned a corner of Geneva into a hub for AI and futures thinking. The three parallel events – on global AI governance, on information infrastructure, and on whatever it is that AI for Good is becoming – brought governments, decision-makers, AI experts, AI novices, optimists, pessimists, some alarmingly sure-footed robots, and even a handful of humanitarians together into a darkened warehouse by the airport.
What’s the AI mood suggested by these three summits? Try a slightly incoherent mix of existential reflection and techno-optimism. Compare the tone between the level-headed warnings presented in a UN scientific panel’s report, released to set the stage for the week, with the eager displays of AI experimentation at AI for Good. Or, the gravitas on some stages (“We don’t have headlights, we don’t know exactly where we’re going, and we’re not sure the car is OK,” AI scholar Yoshua Bengio said during one panel), to the fever dream on AI for Good’s convention floor (“Turn your smartphone into an AI robot!!” a kids’ session implored).
AI continues smushing corporate interests with public goods. Artificial intelligence’s mainstream reckoning runs alongside Big Tech’s growing primacy in economies, culture, nationalism, and power. Our societies are still figuring out how to navigate this, and the aid world is as well. Some partnerships seem logical; others feel incoherent. AI for Good’s can-do “big tent” solutions movement is fertile ground for both. This year’s AI for Good conference has dozens of sponsors and partners, including behemoths like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (Microsoft and Amazon are named in the economy of genocide report by UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese). This year, three Chinese telecoms companies (China Mobile, China Telecom, and Unicom) and an Emirati frontier research outfit (the Technology Innovation Institute) are also premium sponsors.
- Amazon protest: Protesters took some of this incoherence to the stage, as pro-Palestine activists reportedly disrupted a session by Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon and an AI for Good vet. “You’re sitting here as if you’re trying to do good, as if you’re trying to be for the good of AI?” one protester said, according to a video posted by the BDS Movement, which pushes for boycotts and divestment targeting Israel. “Why are you continuing to be complicit in the deaths of innocent people?”
AI boosterism dominates at gatherings like AI for Good: The inevitability of AI integration is the default vibe, overshadowing the growing nuance around guardrails, safety, and even necessity. A Red Cross booth encouraged visitors to weigh the costs of AI alongside the benefits. But the sense of “full speed ahead” feels far more common, at least on the trade show floor: “Everyone has a role in AI for Good,” read one booth’s slogan, “What’s yours?”
Data points |
A few other random sights at AI for Good:
- Soft power: China and the United States ran two of the largest pavilions. Meta and Microsoft were featured as part of the US delegation, which included a big sign for “Freedom 250”, the Trump administration’s homage to Team America.
- So much good: It’s not simply AI for Good. Also on display in booths or on stages: frontier technologies for good, quantum for good, robotics for good, and brain-computer interface technologies for good.
- Competing photo booths: One photo booth, sponsored by a pro-America non-profit chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, offered an AI poem and a stylised AI portrait in exchange for your photo. Another booth, sponsored by Unicom, traded your pic for a print of you in AI cosplay: “Capture a moment with a Chinese cultural relic,” it declared. Data terms and conditions weren’t immediately clear.
- Old tech: AI for Good fetishises the new, but there’s still plenty of not-so-new. A couple of examples: Paro, a lightly vibrating therapeutic seal plushie that has been around for a while; and a prototype for a driverless version of WFP’s tank-like ATV (the human-driven version is apparently named Herbert).
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