Artificial Intelligence for Societal Impact

Advanced Special Topics in Development Engineering

First day of class

The intersection of artificial intelligence and social impact represents one of the most promising frontiers for addressing humanity’s greatest challenges across many domains, e.g., in education, health, climate change, and the future of cities. A vast majority of societal challenges are yet to be solved globally – 20.5M children do not have access to vaccines, 773M adults are illiterate globally, 65M firms in developing countries have an unmet financing need, and 32-132M more people will be driven to extreme poverty due to climate change.

Against this backdrop, while AI is no panacea, it has emerged as a powerful catalyst for change when applied responsibly. We see early innovations in maternal health programs using AI to reduce program dropout rates, in early warning systems protecting communities from floods, in conservation efforts monitoring rainforests for illegal deforestation and many more examples. The recent emergence of generative AI has further broadened access to these capabilities. Capabilities that once required specialist skills – from language translation to disease identification to harmful content detection – are becoming increasingly accessible to frontline workers and organizations.

However, this technological revolution brings both growing opportunity and greater responsibility. It requires identifying and mitigating potential harms (e.g., bias, misinformation) and confronting data privacy concerns. While AI offers novel tools to engineers for solving social challenges, applying it effectively requires a cross-disciplinary innovation process – with contributions from people in product, policy, design, data science, and engineering roles. An approach to social sector impact will take advantage of sophisticated technologies – but must remain deeply human-centered.

Through case studies and live interactions with successful entrepreneurs, students will explore the complex ecosystem of social impact ventures. The course emphasizes practical solutions to challenges found in global communities as well as right in our neighborhoods.

The class is led by Roger Roberts, a partner in the Silicon Valley office of McKinsey & Company. He launched and helped lead the growth of McKinsey’s practice serving clients on the impact of technology in their business, public sector, and social sector organizations – and has served a wide range of clients over his 30+ year career. He has led work looking at AI’s impact on the economy and jobs as well as McKinsey’s work on AI’s impact on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He helped launch McKinsey’s AI Trust practice and serves both technology providers and large organizations on trustworthy development and deployment of AI. Finally, he has led economic development efforts based on technology innovation and McKinsey’s series of reports on the biggest technology trends reshaping the world today.

**Undergraduates seeking to take this class should reach out to Sam Goldman — samuelgoldman@berkeley.edu — in order to enroll.

Course Details

Period: Jan 21 2025 – May 09 2025
Class #: 33959
Unit: 1

Instructor Details

Picture of Roger Roberts
Roger Roberts

Partner in the Silicon Valley office of McKinsey & Company

Picture of Medha Bankhwal
Medha Bankhwal

Associate Partner and co-leader of AI Trust at McKinsey & Company

Host and Fellow Responsibilities

Host Organizations

  • Identify staff supervisor to manage I&E Climate Action Fellow
  • Submit fellowship description and tasks
  • Engage in the matching process
  • Mentor and advise students
  • Communicate with Berkeley program director and give feedback on the program.

Berkeley Program Director​

  • Communicate with host organizations, students, and other university departments to ensure smooth program operations

Student Fellows

  • Complete application and cohort activities
  • Communicate with staff and host organizations
  • Successfully complete assignments from host organization during summer practicum
  • Summarize and report summer experience activities post-fellowship