The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recently introduced this Cognitive Trade Advisor at the Public Forum at the World Trade Organisation, an annual public advocacy and discussion forum.

The artificial intelligence technology powered platform aims to facilitate international trade negotiations especially for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

No wonder that with the advancement in technology every day, new concepts and new machineries are being introduced to the field of artificial intelligence. Take for example, computer vision, which is a subset of artificial intelligence that trains computers to decipher and understand the visual world. Utilizing digital images from deep learning models, videos, and cameras, machines can accurately classify and identify objects and respond to what they perceive.

Moreover, many high-level tasks in real world involve some knowledge of objects present in the site, their physical locations and the fundamental physics involved as a way to understanding the scene. Take for example, images of indoor home environments and similar interior spaces (such as within buildings, and offices). Understanding these environments is a fundamental task for many applications of computer vision. However, one of the challenges in developing computer vision is the availability of suitable datasets on which models can be further trained. This where the synthetic indoor dataset proves to be beneficial. These datasets are made of data created by computer graphics and algorithms, meant to imitate the real world. Depending on the application or research needs, computer vision researchers can build upon the awareness and understanding of their environment to perform a range of simple to complex tasks in real world.

It is therefore understandable that Artificial Intelligence can be useful in every sphere of life, be it human behavior or business.

Anyway, coming back to the topic, the presentation of the innovative system (AI powered-platform for trade negotiations recently) took place at the high level meeting in Geneva which brought together representatives from across the United Nations membership including Head of the OECS Geneva Mission, Stephen Fevrier.

The Cognitive Trade Advisor was jointly invented by the UNCTAD, the Brazilian branch of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC Brazil) and IBM Brazil.

Head of the OECS Geneva Mission Stephen Fevrier outlined the potential critical role of the platform in assisting negotiators representing Small Island Developing States by simplifying the complexity of trade agreements

“We acknowledge the importance of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence as negotiating tools, but critically as a catalyst for commercial opportunities and private sector decision making for Small Island Developing States” Mr. Fevrier said.

ICC Brazil and its partners are working towards making the artificial intelligence platform available to both trade negotiators and industry interests as the technology matures.