The Future of Hunger - AI and the Fight Against Food Insecurity

In this episode of Road to GEM, Harvard PhD Student and CID Affiliate Jasmin Higo speaks with Jean-Martin Bauer, Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis at the World Food Programme, about how AI is shaping the global response to hunger. With over 700 million people facing chronic food insecurity—and food crises driven by conflict, climate change, and economic instability—this conversation asks a pressing question: can innovation keep pace with the complexity of today’s hunger challenges? They explore how AI is being used to anticipate emergencies, improve decision-making, and reimagine humanitarian response. The conversation also touches on the ethical limits of technology in fragile settings, the shift from rural to urban hunger, and what the future holds for global food systems. Whether you're interested in technology, development, or humanitarian work, this episode offers timely insight into how AI is being deployed—and questioned—in the fight against global hunger.

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Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work. The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more. At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.