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AI trends in 2025 that drive progress on global goals
As the 10th annual UN Science, Technology, and Innovation Forum gets under way in New York, GZERO Media’s Global Stage series presents a timely conversation about the promise and peril of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Moderated by GZERO Media Chief Content Officer Tony Maciulis, this forward-looking panel features Microsoft’s chief data scientist Dr. Juan Lavista Ferres, UN AI policy lead Lucia Velasco, George Washington University professor and author Jeffrey Ding, and Eurasia Group’s Caitlin Dean.
Filmed inside United Nations headquarters, the discussion explores whether AI can truly be a tool for inclusion—or if it risks deepening global divides. Panelists highlight challenges from access to electricity and internet, to language gaps and workforce training, while also spotlighting ways AI is already helping to deliver healthcare and education at scale.
With global cooperation and multi-stakeholder governance still works in progress, this Global Stage conversation captures a pivotal moment for technology and the UN’s 2030 Agenda.
This conversation is presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft, from the 2025 STI Forum at the United Nations in New York. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical conversations on the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.
See more at https://www.gzeromedia.com/global-stage
Global Stage at the 2025 UN Science, Technology, and Innovation Forum
Watch our Global Stage livestream conversation from inside United Nations headquarters in New York on the sidelines of the 2025 Science, Technology, and Innovation Forum. Our expert panel will reflect on the Forum’s key themes, such as inclusive innovation, technology transfer, and digital governance, and the future of science, technology, and innovation. How are technological advancements shaping global power dynamics as part of the AI economy? How can emerging technologies be governed more equitably and collaboratively on a global level?
GZERO's chief content officer Tony Maciulis moderates the discussion with our panel:
- Caitlin Dean, Director and Deputy Head of Corporates, Eurasia Group
- Jeffrey Ding, Author “Technology and the Rise of Great Powers”; Professor at George Washington University
- Juan Lavista Ferres, Corporate Vice President and Chief Data Scientist of the AI for Good Lab, Microsoft
- Lucía Velasco, AI Policy Lead, United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies
Event link: gzeromedia.com/globalstage
This livestream is the latest in the award-winning Global Stage series, a partnership between GZERO and Microsoft that examines critical issues at the intersection of technology, politics, and society.
Live from the UN: Science, Technology, and Innovation on the Global Stage | Wednesday, May 8, 2025, 2 PM ET
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Can we use AI to secure the world's digital future?
How do we ensure AI is safe, available to everyone, and enhancing productivity? It’s a big topic at this year’s UN General Assembly. That’s why GZERO’s Global Stage livestream on Tuesday brought together leading experts at the heart of the action for “Live from the United Nations: Securing our Digital Future,” an event produced in partnership between the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, or CRAF’d, and GZERO Media’s Global Stage series, sponsored by Microsoft. The conversation was moderated by Folly Bah Thibault, a journalist and senior presenter for Al-Jazeera English.
Securing the future starts by building a strong foundation, and the International Monetary Fund plays a key role in the fight by matching funding to the needs of developing economies. But it goes deeper than that, said Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. “What we deliver is not just money, it is putting in place strong institutions.
”Those same strong institutions will help build a more peaceful world, said Czech President Petr Pavel — but only if countries can learn to compromise. “If we don’t want to live forever in conflict, we have to finally learn that we have to share this planet.”
In that sense, tackling a lot of the problems the world faces — conflict, inequality, technological disruption — boils down to finding shared values and putting funds where they are most needed. “What is regulation and policy if it is not based on values?” asked Under-Secretary-General for Policy Guy Ryder, adding that good policy, properly funded, would allow “you [to] connect people … and educate them to use the technologies” that could prove transformative.
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said AI technology will play a crucial role in helping the world achieve Sustainable Development Goals — most of which are in very rough shape. “It’s not about stopping, it’s about really accelerating” to make good on what can be achieved by 2030.
Eurasia Group and GZERO Media President Ian Bremmer said his work with the UN on developing an international framework for AI has focused on “deploying AI to help up meet the sustainable development goals.”
But safeguards aren’t enough, said Microsoft President Brad Smith. “Guardrails aren’t going to ensure it reaches everybody. Investment will,” he said. Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI and has invested in more than 20 AI-related startups.
The US State Department is also working to leverage artificial intelligence in advancing global peace. “We see data as the lens that brings the factors that drive instability into focus,” said Anne Witkowsky, assistant secretary of state for conflict and stabilization operations. That means using AI to bring together the big picture — economics, politics, climate, sociology — to identify hot spots before problems spiral.
Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Workneh Gebeyehu offered a practical example: “We have a climate center that works for all Africa to predict droughts, floods, and locust storms,” relying on pattern recognition technology. That helps farmers and governments react in real-time, ideally avoiding the worst of the catastrophes.
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Why the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals are not on track to be financed soon
The world faces a sustainable development crisis, and while most countries have strategies in place, they don’t have the cash to back them up. How far off track are we with the financing needed to support the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ranging from quality education and health care to climate action and clean water?
Shari Spiegel, who runs the UN’s Financing for Sustainable Development Office, sat down with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis at a Global Stage event for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings this week. She explains that the SDGs were off track even before the pandemic and that now, owing to global crises, many poorer countries have slipped backwards.
“We actually started backtracking on many of these goals as countries were under enormous stress, and particularly the poorest countries,” she said, noting that the global output of many of the poorest nations has fallen by 30% — and some, such as the Small Island Developing States, by 40%. This has led to an enormous finance divide — raising SDG financing and investment gaps from $2 trillion a few years ago to around $4 trillion today.
So how can the UN restrengthen multilateralism and, in turn, help narrow this gap? Watch here.
For more of our 2024 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings coverage, visit Global Stage.
Use new data to fight climate change & other challenges: UN tech envoy
Artificial intelligence has brought with it new methods of both collecting and analyzing data. The UN’s special envoy on technology, Amandeep Singh Gill, highlights the importance of developing robust data sets to address critical issues facing the world, such as global food insecurity.
“We need new data sets on how farmers are adapting to changes induced by the shift in our climate landscape. So, bring those data sets together, run analytics on them, and be (more) smart about climate change resilient agriculture.
As the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 deadline fast approaches, Gill also emphasizes the need for a global network of “digital champions” for the SDGs.
“I think that’s the key area: Data capacity and human capacity doing it together,”
The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Thompson of The Atlantic and was held by GZERO Media in collaboration with the United Nations, the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, and the Early Warnings for All initiative.
Watch the full Global Stage conversation: Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer?
- The Graphic Truth: Has climate change hurt or helped farmers? ›
- Geoengineering: science fiction or a solution to the climate crisis? ›
- Can data and AI save lives and make the world safer? ›
- How AI will roil politics even if it creates more jobs ›
- A vision for inclusive AI governance ›
- Use AI and data to predict and prevent crises - Melinda Bohannon - GZERO Media ›
Climate change: are we overreacting?
Climate experts agree that climate change is real and human-caused. But how far should the world go to combat it? Will the worst-case scenarios forecast by climate scientists end up a reality?
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, author Bjorn Lomborg says the answer is no. Climate change is indeed a problem, he says, but “it’s not the end of the world.”
We're not talking about ‘we need to double or triple [renewable energy capabilities].’ We need a hundred-fold increase,” Lomborg tells Ian Bremmer. “We are far away from this actually being something that will scale even in rich countries and certainly not in poor countries.”
Lomborg worries that policy priorities are out of whack and billions of dollars are being wasted on incremental climate mitigation when there are so many urgent issues, like education or maternal mortality, where that money could be used more effectively.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
The fight to “connect every last person” to the internet
Doreen Bogdan-Marin spends a lot of time thinking about how to keep the world connected as the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union. The biggest frontier in that realm is expanding internet access to those in the developing world who struggle to get online.
To that end, she organized Partner2Connect, which hopes to raise $100 billion by 2026 to “connect every last person” on the planet to the internet. Doing so could help progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are woefully behind schedule.
She and GZERO’s Tony Maciulis discussed the potential benefits of worldwide connectivity, as well as AI’s potential to help close the gap.
More at the UN General Assembly: Global Stage.
- No internet, no education, says Vickie Robinson ›
- Should internet be free for everyone? A Global Stage debate ›
- Want Africa to grow? Get people and businesses online: Africa expert ›
- The Graphic Truth: New digital jobs in a post-pandemic world ›
- "Access is a fundamental right" - Digital activist Vilas Dhar - GZERO Media ›
- Live premiere: Gender Equality in the age of AI - GZERO Media ›
How can the world build back better public health after COVID?
Every year, over ten million people globally die from high blood pressure, more than all infectious diseases combined. Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control, is tackling this massive problem in public health, among many others, as CEO of Resolve to Save Lives.
He told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis that ensuring easy access to three drugs — amlodipine for blood pressure, metformin for blood sugar, and atorvastatin for cholesterol — could save tens of millions of lives over the next quarter century for just a penny per pill.
It’s part of a set of goals Frieden calls the three Rs: Renaissance in public health, robust primary healthcare and resilient populations. But as the developing world takes on more and more public debt, where will the money come from?
See more from Global Stage.