What’s your #DigitalLifeline? 🌐
This #WTISD, people around the world are sharing the digital technologies that help them stay connected, learn, work and support one another.
Share yours in our global poll: https://wtisd.itu.int/2026/digital-lifelines/
What if the sun took down the global Internet?
Öykü Işık, Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity at IMD, Switzerland, shares her insights on critical digital risks.
Read more in our latest report « When digital systems fail : The hidden risks of our digital world » 💡
Maritime safety relies on dependable communications.
ITU coordinates the spectrum use, identification resources and standards for the systems behind global distress signals https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/terrestrial/maritime/Pages/default.aspx #WTISD #DigitalLifelines
Published by ITU, UNDRR and @sciencespo , with a panel of 12 experts from around the world, the new report explores how digital disruptions can cascade across borders and sectors – and what can be done about it.
Read it now:https://wtisd.itu.int/2026/digital-risks-report/
"The stakes of getting AI-driven agricultural advice wrong are not abstract—they are life and death."
For Manali, Ayush, and Buvi, those words come from experience.
This week's #GenAI4GoodChallenge spotlight turns to Inko, the second of three teams building for the Agriculture use case in Lesotho.
While building a voice bot for farmers in Uttar Pradesh, India, the Inko team encountered something that reframed everything. Farmer suicide rates in the region were alarmingly high. A misidentified crop disease, a wrong remedy, an entire harvest lost—for a family with no alternative income, that loss can be catastrophic.
That experience shaped not just their technical standards, but their understanding of what this work is actually about. The urgency, as they put it, is not just technical. It is deeply human.
Inko is working to build a generative AI advisory tool for Lesotho that would give farmers access to timely, reliable guidance through low-tech channels like SMS and voice, designed for low-bandwidth environments and limited connectivity. Every response would be grounded in verified, structured data, with human oversight built into the workflow from the start.
"Trust in AI must be earned, not assumed."
If they get this right, it won't just change what farmers know. It will change what becomes possible for the families who depend on them.
🔗 Follow the series with link in bio
#GenAI4GoodChallenge #GenAI4Good #AIforGood #IEEEHT #HumanitarianTech #TechForGood #ResponsibleAI #AI4Impact #SocialImpactTech #GlobalDevelopment #PublicInterestTech #DigitalPublicGoods #BeHealthyBeMobile #UNIATF
Digital systems are more interconnected – and more vulnerable –than most people realize. Find out what's at stake in our upcoming report on critical digital risks coming 5 May https://wtisd.itu.int/2026/digital-risks-report/
What if mobile phones went silent, payments failed, and hospitals lost their data… all at once? This isn't science fiction.
More revealed in our new report on 5 May https://wtisd.itu.int/2026/digital-risks-report/
Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than governance frameworks.
The Global Dialogue on AI Governance, taking place 6–7 July in Geneva, Switzerland, aims to close that gap, marking a significant moment for international cooperation on artificial intelligence.
Hear from the Co-Chairs of the #AIDialogue, H.E. Egriselda López and H.E. Rein Tammsaar:
- Why this dialogue is happening now
- How it supports the Global Digital Compact, the UN’s shared vision for an open, safe, and inclusive digital future
🎙️In this special episode of ITU Technologized: /YijGwYmgqLDUC7es6x
ITU sets global standards for energy efficient, low-carbon digital technologies, and tracks ICT sector emissions and e-waste through the Greening Digital Companies Report and the Global E-waste Monitor https://www.itu.int/green-digital-action #WTISD #DigitalLifelines
We opened this year’s #ITUCouncil2026 by reflecting on our work to strengthen ITU’s role in the digital world and build partnerships for universal connectivity.
Now we move forward, shaping an agile, innovative and trusted ITU.
Join #TeamITU as we build on three years of reform and progress to connect the unconnected and create a #FitForFutureITU.
"In agriculture, a single wrong piece of AI-generated advice can destroy months of labor and devastate a family's livelihood."
For Alice Dong, that's the north star that guides her team.
As part of the GenAI for Good Challenge, we've been asking each of the nine finalist teams what drew them to this work. This week: AgriPivot, led by Alice and Paul Hill, building for the Agriculture use case in Lesotho.
Alice is an agricultural Extension specialist in rural Colorado and an AI/ML engineer—two worlds she has spent her career trying to bring together.
The GenAI for Good Challenge gave her a unique chance to act on both.
What crystallized the urgency was a number: 1 to 4,000. One advisor for every 4,000 farmers in regions like Lesotho. Advisors are the human link between official knowledge and the field — and at that ratio, most farmers never get the guidance they need in time.
AgriPivot is working to build a generative AI tool that gives advisors fast access to accurate, vetted answers so they spend less time searching and more time in the field. Their system would be engineered to say "I don't know" rather than guess, and to always keep a human expert in the loop.
For AgriPivot, success wouldn't be a launch. It would be hearing an advisor in Lesotho say: "This tool saves us time and helps us give better advice on maize and beans."
If they get this right, their solution will give the people who serve farmers back something they've been running out of: time.
🔗 Link in bio to follow the series.
#GenAI4GoodChallenge #GenAI4Good #AIforGood #IEEEHT #HumanitarianTech #TechForGood #ResponsibleAI #AI4Impact #SocialImpactTech #GlobalDevelopment #PublicInterestTech #DigitalPublicGoods #BeHealthyBeMobile #UNIATF
