About
The AI and Global Development Lab is a network of innovation hubs that partners with organizations worldwide to apply frontier AI to the mapping and causal analysis of development, broadly defined. Drawing on expertise in causal inference, computer vision, statistics, political economy, and machine learning, each of our sites brings together researchers and engineers to solve meaningful problems — from analyzing satellite imagery to reveal development trajectories, to developing methods for planetary-scale causal inference that inform evidence-based policymaking in areas such as poverty reduction and disaster resilience. Our work has been funded by, among others, the Swedish National Space Agency and the Swedish Research Council. [Culture]
Mission
Tracing the causes and consequences of human development—village by village, decade by decade—is an urgent empirical challenge of our time.
We built the AI & Global Development Lab for this purpose: a living, causal atlas of global well-being. Our atlas is more than maps. It is a continuously updated synthesis of Earth-observation imagery, machine learning, and rigorous causal inference.
We treat transparency and statistical rigor as paramount. All data sets, code, and benchmarks are openly licensed; you can take up where our work leaves off.
Our interdisciplinary team spans UT Austin, Harvard, Chalmers, and Linköping University, but researchers, governments, and citizens everywhere can interrogate the atlas, test interventions, and track progress in real time.
If mapping humanity’s trajectory at planetary scale captures your imagination, join us.
Lab Sites
Institute for Analytical Sociology, Chalmers & Linkoping University (Sweden)
Institution, Founding PI & co-Director: Adel Daoud, Associate Professor at Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, and Affiliated Associate Professor in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence for the Social Sciences, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
[Journeys of Scholars]
Harvard University (USA)
Institution PI: Xiao-Li Meng, Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics
UT Austin (USA)
Institution PI & co-Director: Connor T. Jerzak, Assistant Professor of Government
[Funding & Support] [Partners]
[Planetary Causal Inference]
[Quant Methods at UT Austin]
