ImpactAI Insights

The Next Frontier in Policy Decisions: Between Information and Insight

Technical Brief | Part 2: Building an Evidence Infrastructure in the Age of AI

In a world flooded with studies and data, the real challenge is turning information into insight. Discover how ImpactAI is building the infrastructure that makes causal evidence comparable, contextual, and truly usable for smarter policy decisions.

Building AI for Development: ImpactAI and ZeroHungerAI on the Global Stage

Event | April 13, 2026

At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the DECDI AI Lab showcased how ImpactAI and ZeroHungerAI are moving AI for development from ambition to deployment, linking rigorous evidence synthesis and early risk detection to real-world policy action.

Extracting Experimental Evidence at Scale: Building the World's Largest Open RCT Database

Technical Brief | March 20, 2026

How we built a multi-stage, LLM-powered pipeline to extract, standardize, and organize causal evidence from thousands of randomized controlled trials in development economics.

The AI Lab at Tokyo LEADS: From Evidence to Action

Event | March 4, 2026

How do you turn rigorous evidence into better real-world decisions? At Tokyo LEADS 2026, development leaders across Asia explored how AI-powered tools like ImpactAI are helping embed evidence directly into project design, before critical policy choices are locked in.

Spotlight Interview: Hear from our partners at Google

Event | January 10, 2026

Karan Bhatia, Global Head, Government Affairs & Public Policy, Google, outlining Collaborative Innovation Shaping Global Development

Spotlight Interview: Hear from our partners at the Government of Nigeria

Event | January 10, 2026

Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Nigeria, on Building Capacity to Harness AI for Shared Prosperity.

Spotlight Interview: Hear from our partners at the Gates Foundation

Event | January 10, 2026

Jamie Zimmerman, Deputy Director, Digital Connectivity, Gates Foundation, highlighting Small AI with Big Impact.

New publication

News | January 2, 2026

New paper in PNAS Nexus: we show how LLMs can turn skewed social media data into reliable unemployment estimates, not just nationally but down to the city level.

The Next Frontier in Policy Decisions: AI-Powered Causal Insights

Technical Brief | Part 1: Why We Built ImpactAI

Understanding what truly works in development means uncovering real cause-and-effect, not just correlations. Causal inference helps translate rigorous evidence into smarter, more reliable policy decisions.

Unlocking the Power of Science & AI for Development Impact

Event | October 10, 2025

Join us at the World Bank Annual Meetings for ‘Unlocking the Power of Science and AI for Development Impact,’ hosted by the Development Impact Group. The event will launch ImpactAI and bring together leaders in policy, research, and technology to explore how science and AI can accelerate learning and scale impact for transformative development.

Context-specific AI for Low-resource Languages, Part 1

Technical Brief | September 16, 2025

Large language models often fail in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts due to limited representation of local languages and cultural nuance. We explore how our context-specific AI model for Nigerian social media dramatically improved performance, highlighting both the challenges and the promise of building equitable AI for low-resource settings

Context-specific AI for Low-resource Languages, Part 2

Technical Brief | September 16, 2025

Many AI models appear effective in low-resource contexts, until they're tested against real-world data. This brief reveals how ad hoc benchmarks vastly overestimate AI performance and shows why building representative evaluation datasets is essential for context-aware AI.

AWF LEADS Workshop

News | August 1, 2025

At the recent AFW LEADS Workshop in Togo, the AI Lab deepened collaborations with regional stakeholders, showcased our flagship product ImpactAI, and left with a refreshed vision for evidence-driven, context-aware development.

Togo Data Lab

News | July 28, 2025

The Togo Data Lab is pioneering the use of AI and data tools to improve public services in Togo. At the 2025 LEADS Workshop, the Lab showcased how embedded, locally tailored solutions can support smarter policymaking and facilitate regional learning.

Spotlight Interview: Hear from our Program Lead, Samuel Fraiberger

News | December 12, 2024

Learn more about how our AI Lab leverages our partnership with Google to build impactful AI solutions

Government AI 100 (2025)

News | December 11, 2024

Apolitical's Government AI 100 list celebrates public servants from around the world leading on AI adoption, capacity-building, and regulation to shape the future of this powerful technology. Read how DIME AI is harnessing AI for capacity-building.

AI for Social Good

News | December 11, 2024

Google's webinar on December 2, 2024, covered how the World Bank and other nonprofits are leveraging generative AI to supercharge climate action, education, crisis response, and more. 

GenAI 4 Development Impact

News | October 23, 2024

Hosted by the World Bank with support from Google.org, GenAI 4 Development Impact brought together leaders from the World Bank, governments, private sector, academia, and policy to explore the transformative potential of generative AI in tackling global development challenges.

Green shoots, AI roots: Responding to crises and building sustainable futures with gen AI

News | October 22, 2024

Nonprofits are building AI models and agents -- like ImpactAI -- to tackle global challenges and uncovering business lessons for organizations everywhere.

AI for Social Good E-Book

News | October 17, 2024

Google showcases how nonprofits, including the World Bank's Development Impact Group, are tackling urgent societal issues across climate action, education, crisis response and more.

321 real-world gen AI use cases from the world’s leading organizations

News | September 24, 2024

ImpactAI is in good company. Top companies, governments, researchers, and startups are already enhancing their work with Google's AI solutions. 

Measuring Development 2024: AI, the Next Generation

Event | May 02, 2024

The World Bank's Development Impact Group (DIME) and Development Data Group (DECDG), the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), and the University of Chicago hosted the tenth annual Measuring Development Conference, featuring speakers shaping the way generative AI tools will be adopted and regulated.

21 nonprofits join our first generative AI accelerator

News | March 28, 2024

ImpactAI is part of the first cohort of the Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI, which provides mentorship, technical training, and pro bono support to nonprofits working with generative AI.