Conference primer - Innovation and Technology: 2024

Generative AI is booming. It is a cutting-edge technology that is poised to disrupt various economic, social, and cultural sectors, and it extends far beyond simple human-like text generation using chatbots. Drawing on original analysis of patent and scientific data, the WIPO patent landscape report on Generative AI provides a snapshot of the patent situation for GenAI.

The 2024 edition of the World Intellectual Property Report highlights the positive impact of innovation and industrial policy on helping to leverage the existing capabilities of a country or region.
The World Intellectual Property Report, published every two years, offers fresh insights into the role of innovation in market economies and, in doing so, fosters evidence-based policy-making.

The Council, composed of 48 ITU Member States, acts as the Union’s governing body in the interval between plenipotentiary conferences. It considers broad telecommunication policy issues and ensures that the Union’s strategy responds to changes in the telecommunication environment.

The Event, an extended version of the WSIS Forum, will mark a significant milestone of twenty years of progress made in the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society. It will serve as a platform aiming to review the progress made in the implementation of the WSIS outcomes, in particularly as outlined in the Geneva Plan of Action of 2003, under the mandates of participating UN agencies. The WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event will host multistakeholder discussions with the objective to take stock of the achievements and key trends, challenges and opportunities, and to evaluate the accomplishments during the two-decade period based on reports submitted from various WSIS stakeholders, including states and WSIS Action Line Facilitators.

AI for Good is organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – the UN specialized agency for information and communication technology – in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland.

Following one of the main recommendations contained in the report entitled "A World That Counts" , presented in November 2014 by the United Nations Secretary-General's Independent Expert and Advisory Group on Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, the Statistical Commission agreed that a United Nations World Data Forum on Sustainable Development Data (UN World Data Forum) would be the suitable platform for intensifying cooperation with various professional groups, such as information technology, geospatial information managers, data scientists, and users, as well as civil society stakeholders.

A record 62 million tonnes (Mt) of e-waste was produced in 2022, Up 82% from 2010; On track to rise another 32%, to 82 million tonnes, in 2030; Billions of dollars worth of strategically-valuable resources squandered, dumped; Just 1% of rare earth element demand is met by e-waste recycling.