AI for Good 2025 Lands in Geneva: Big Goals, Big Stage, Bigger Questions

The AI for Good Global Summit is returning to Geneva from July 8–11, 2025, hosted by the United Nations’ ITU and partners.
The event promises to demonstrate how AI can be applied to tackle global challenges - from health and climate to education and… networks?

Yes. One of the biggest focus areas this year is telecom infrastructure - specifically AI-native network architecture and 5G optimization.

What the Organisers Are Saying

The official message? AI can only serve humanity if it's sustainable, scalable, and inclusive.
According to the ITU:

“AI for Good is the leading action-oriented platform promoting AI to advance health, climate, gender, inclusive prosperity, and sustainable infrastructure.”

They’re positioning networks as the backbone of every other AI goal - and pushing hard for standardised, efficient, and intelligent infrastructure.

What That Means (In Human Words)

AI for Good isn’t about flashy announcements or big promises.

It’s about making sure AI actually helps people - by improving health, education, safety, climate action, and the systems we all rely on.

This summit brings together researchers, policymakers, and engineers to work on real ways AI can support daily life - not just in big tech hubs, but in every part of the world.

It’s not a showcase. It’s a working session to figure out how AI can be practical, useful, and fair for everyone.

🧩 Let’s Connect the Dots

Why do we need a global summit for this?

Because AI isn’t local.
The decisions made about how AI is trained, tested, and used affect everyone. But the benefits and risks aren’t spread evenly.

A global summit gives us a space to:

• Share knowledge across borders, not just within tech giants.

• Spot patterns early, especially around ethics, bias, and misuse.

• Agree on shared guardrails that don’t depend on just one country’s values or regulations.

• Push for use cases that help all communities, not just the wealthy or connected ones.

AI is a global challenge - and some challenges can only be fully understood from a global perspective.

What’s the story so far?

The AI for Good Global Summit was launched in 2017 by the UN’s ITU agency to make one thing clear:
AI isn’t just a tech breakthrough - it’s a tool that can support humanity, if we build it that way.

Since then, the summit has evolved into a yearly gathering point for researchers, governments, tech companies, and non-profits.
The focus? Real use cases. Shared standards. Responsible collaboration. And global visibility.

It’s not a marketing event. It’s where the serious groundwork happens:

• From ethical AI frameworks

• To benchmarking initiatives

• To research groups tackling climate, health, and telecom challenges with AI tools

Each year brings a new focus, but the mission stays the same:
Use AI to address global challenges - and make sure no one’s left out of the conversation.

What Has Already Been Achieved?

Over the years, it’s been a launchpad for real-world initiatives, frameworks, and research that are now shaping how AI is applied around the globe.

Here’s what has come out of it so far:

• ITU AI Standards for Telecom
  Focus groups born from the summit have helped shape international standards like the Y.3172 series, which outline how machine learning can be embedded in 5G networks. These standards are now referenced by major telecom vendors and regulators.

• Benchmarking Frameworks
  Collaborations kicked off at the summit contributed to shared evaluation tools - particularly in areas like explainable AI, sustainability metrics, and AI robustness. These are now influencing how organisations measure safety and effectiveness in real deployments.

• Cross-sector Pilots
  The summit has sparked partnerships across healthcare, agriculture, and disaster response. For example, AI-for-health prototypes presented here have led to WHO-backed tools for early disease detection in low-resource settings.

• Global Research Networks
  Institutions like EPFL, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss Data Science Center have become recurring players, helping link academic research with industry applications - especially in AI infrastructure and climate modelling.

So while the summit may not always make headlines, it has consistently been a meeting ground where the dots are connected - and some of the groundwork for applied AI actually gets done.

Who’s Participating? Countries & Universities at AI for Good Networks Track

While the official programme page doesn’t list every participating university and country by track, here’s what we know so far from AI for Good’s structure and past patterns:

Countries & Organisations – Likely Involved

• All 193 ITU member states (since ITU includes every UN country)

• Co-convened with the Swiss Government - indicating strong local involvement

• Summit partners include 47 UN agencies - suggesting multi-national representation across calling regions 
  
  

Participating Universities & Research Institutes

• University of Sheffield - Prof. James Marshall is confirmed as a keynote speaker

• ETH Zurich and EPFL - frequently involved in AI + telecom research, likely contributors to the Networks track. 

• Swiss Data Science Center - a key Swiss AI/ML organization that often supports 5G and telecom initiatives

📋 TL;DR

Bottom Line

📍When: July 8–11, 2025
📍Where: Geneva, Switzerland + livestream
🎟️ Cost: Free (registration required)
🌐 More info: aiforgood.itu.int

Tracks include:

• Networks

• Health

• Climate

• Robotics

• Education

• Human Rights
  ...and more.

🧊 Stop the AI Cult - FrozenLight Perspective

When we first saw the news with the title “How can we use AI to solve world problems?” - we didn’t really understand what this summit was about.
Why do we need it? What does it do? What is the goal?

As we looked deeper, we realised this headline is only one track of the summit.
It may have grabbed attention, but it’s not the full story.

With a name like AI for Good, it’s easy to get confused.
But now we get it.

Yes - this event does ask how AI can help with big global problems.
Because some problems can only be understood from a global view.

But it also looks at the challenges AI is creating.
And how we can work together to build solutions for that too.

We love it - and seeing that it started back in 2017 and has brought real value and real progress over the years is very encouraging.
The only thing we want to see now is this turning into an organisation that operates all year round - not just a summit.

We believe the challenge is real, and the impact should happen all year, not once a year.

We’ll definitely be back with a recap on the 2025 AI for Good Summit.