Kuwait this week is the unlikely setting for a high-stakes experiment: the first Gulf Red Crescent Conference on Artificial Intelligence, running October 22–23, 2023, at the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre. Outlined under the motto “Towards New Horizons in Humanitarian Work and Development Media—Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence,” the two-day conference intends to transform the potential of AI into action through tools for relief, reporting, and regional cooperation.
According to the organizers, the conference is seen as an opportunity to develop a unified Gulf application of AI through the entire humanitarian life cycle—from early warning and needs assessment to media training and digital documentation. Sponsored by the Kuwait Red Crescent Society (KRCS) and the GCC General Secretariat, the conference will replicate a Gulf digital initiative and comprise interactive workshops for journalists and humanitarian communicators honing practices to produce effective digital content during and after crises. It also aims to be connected to Gulf Red Crescent Day, October 23, which supports the gathering of Gulf and international experts to result in coordinated action to turn thinking into doing.
Khaled Al-Mughamis, the head of KRCS (Kuwait Red Crescent Society), informed attendees that AI can “predict disasters, analyze data to direct aid, and maybe even restore family ties”—but it should enhance, not replace, frontline volunteers. He encouraged tech companies to partner with humanitarian organizations and explained that data protection and strong ethical guardrails should be in place before moving forward.
So why does it matter? Humanitarian operations recently showed how AI and satellite imaging can compress days of reconnaissance down to a few hours, isolating damaged neighborhoods and shortening the time from disaster to life-saving aid delivery. The UN and simultaneously developing technology partners have used automated image analysis to inform rapid damage assessments and flood mapping—this could significantly shrink the time between a disaster event and life-saving aid on the ground. But what comes with this power are challenges: biased models, privacy risks, and evidence of the temptation to automate too much decision-making that is better kept in human hands.
The conference in Kuwait aims to solve this issue by trying out practical projects (like data pipelines, AI-assisted mapping, and media training) that follow a regional ethics framework designed to protect those who will be most affected. If Gulf societies can work to bridge the policy, technology, and humanitarian volunteer-led aspects of Red Crescent operations, it could become a testing site for responsible humanitarian AI in a practical triage setting—in other words, if you can really trust sophisticated algorithms to do the best for the world’s weakest when trust matters the most.
As delegations share blueprints and toolkits over two days, the true experimental question will be if smart models and human compassion can become intertwined in operating systems that can act faster, more fairly, and more transparently when disasters happen. Should the pilot prove successful in Kuwait, its impact could extend beyond the Gulf region.
