Reboot: Global AI Watch

In this interview with Reboot for Global AI Watch, B Cavello discusses findings from an Aspen Institute global survey and reflects on what it reveals about the intersection of AI and food systems. Practitioners consistently emphasized institutional capacity, governance, and distributional challenges as central constraints. The conversation explores how AI might support greater transparency, participation, and resilience, and what these insights mean for U.S. state and local policymakers working on food security, land governance, and public-sector capacity.

A conversation with B Cavello, Director of Emerging Technologies at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Digital program.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Elana Banin: Tell us about your role at the Aspen Institute and what you’re working on at the intersection of AI, innovation, and food security.

B Cavello: I’m the Director of Emerging Technologies at the Aspen Institute. I work within Aspen Digital, one of the Institute’s policy programs. The work my team does focuses on creating the better future we want and on the role technology plays in helping us get there. And more specifically, how can people shape the technologies to actually build that future?

One thing we all know is that food security is an ingredient for a better future. Solving world hunger is the most “Miss America” answer out there; everyone has known it’s a problem basically since the dawn of humanity, and yet it remains a problem even with all of these incredible technologies available to us.

There are many claims that AI and other new technologies will vastly improve the world, and I would love for that to be true. So the goal of our work is, if we take that at face value, if we believe people really want to make the world better, how can we help them focus on the problems that matter most?

In our food security work, we brought in experts and practitioners from the global food security community and asked where help was needed. Where would energy, investment, and innovation actually bring the greatest impact?