Hero Awards Launches AI-Driven Program to Recognize Citizen Contributions to UN Sustainability Goals

The Hero Awards has announced a new program that enables citizen activists to achieve recognition for their efforts toward the United Nations' 17 Sustainability Goals through a customized progression cycle involving seven artificial intelligence systems. According to Hero Awards Sustainability Director Amy Chang, the initiative addresses the lack of recognition mechanisms for everyday contributors to planetary improvement by creating a process that harnesses both AI and human intelligence to evolve answers to the UN's 169 Targets within the 17 Agenda for Sustainability Goals.

The process leverages the strengths of each large language model while significantly reducing hallucinations, resulting in comprehensive, trustworthy, and solidly grounded action plans for achieving specific Targets. The sequence that has proven most effective for eliciting original, profound, and actionable solutions involves Meta.ai, Claude.ai, Copilot.microsoft.com, Gemini.google.com, Perplexity.ai, Deepseek.com, and Chatgpt.com (v.5). Each Target is presented to these AI systems sequentially, with each response feeding into the next, creating a refined and strengthened solution through all seven iterations.

Initial testing involved students from Cambridge, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford universities, who were assisted by girls from the Herat Underground School in Afghanistan—an institution founded to educate girls forbidden by the Taliban to attend formal schooling. The project represents a collaboration between Friends Beyond Borders, AI Happiness Accelerator, and the World Mind Network, demonstrating its global reach and inclusive approach.

The program's significance extends beyond solution generation, as participants working with the seven AI systems experience substantial advancements in cognitive skills. Hero Award Education Director Savithri Machiraju notes that each AI possesses different personalities and varied strengths, and as users engage with the system, they not only improve each AI's responsiveness but also exponentially enhance their own problem-solving capabilities. Preliminary data from a related project showed that for every 100 run-throughs, 61 participants wrote popular blog posts, 39 published articles, 8 started NGOs or non-profit entities associated with their chosen Target, and 5 initiated startups, indicating substantial real-world impact beyond theoretical solutions.

All generated solutions are archived on The Hero Awards' academia.edu site for indefinite study and reference. Participants can address multiple UN Targets, and multiple individuals can work on the same Target, as the AIs and their human partners demonstrate nearly endless creativity in deriving new approaches. Winners receive recognition through the organization's social media channels, blogs, websites, and press releases, with the additional privilege of being able to confer the award upon others who follow the established protocol.

The program leverages the UN's established framework available at https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/, ensuring alignment with global standards and measurements. Chang describes the initiative as democratizing efforts toward planetary preservation and human thriving, noting that while it requires dedicated work, the process involves familiar AI systems and has the potential to build a global mindset demonstrating that meaningful change is both achievable and personally rewarding.