20 Grantees of Google AI Impact Challenge Announced at Google I/O 2019

With Google’s AI for social good, the company is trying to address societal challenges and issues with the help of AI.

Under this program, Google launched AI Impact Challenge, which aims to attract emerging technologies to solve environmental, social and humanitarian problems.

AI Impact Challenge received an overwhelming response from 119 countries. There were a total of 2,602 applications.

On 7th May 2019, Google announced the 20 organizations chosen using criteria like responsible use of AI, potential for social impact, feasibility, and scalability.

The issues and areas covered by the selected projects are health, environment, education, economic opportunity, and empowerment, misinformation, and crisis and emergency response.

The chosen projects will share a grant of $25 million from Google.org. Besides the grant, these organizations will also get credit and consulting from Google Cloud, they will be mentored by Google AI experts and will get to be a part of a customized accelerator program from Google Developers Launchpad.

Here’re the projects chosen under the program:

Eastern Health, Austalia – It will optimize policy and public health response around suicide with the help of analysis of records from ambulances. They help identify trends and potential points of intervention.

Fondation MSF, France – It helps medical staff in low-resource areas to identify patterns in antimicrobial imagery, so that the right antibiotics can be prescribed for bacterial infections.

Hand Talk, Brazil – It’s a tool that helps translate Portuguese language into Brazilian sign language with the help of a digital avatar.

HURIDOCS, Switzerland – It uses natural language processing and Machine learning to identify and put together relevant case-information to help human rights lawyers to effectively defend their cases.

Makerere University, Uganda – Is working on air pollution sensors to measure air pollution, predict it and intervene in a cost-effective and relevant manner.

Skillab BV, Netherlands – It helps refugees to translate their skills to the European labor market. It even recommends relevant career paths to the refugees to choose from.

The Trevor Project, USA – They help determine LGBTQ youth’s suicide risk level with the help of natural language processing and sentiment analysis. This helps tailor services for individuals seeking help.

Quill.org – It helps give instant feedback to low-income students on their writing. It uses deep learning tools for the same.

Wadhwani AI, India – It is working on stabilizing production of crops and reduction in the use of pesticides with the help of image recognition to track and analyze pest control efforts. This technology helps in taking timely and localized actions to control the situation.

Some other chosen organizations are American University of Beirut (Lebanon), New York University (USA), Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Se?ora del Rosario?(Colombia), The Pennsylvania State University (USA), Gringgo Indonesia Foundation (Indonesia), Full Fact (UK), Nexleaf Analytics (USA), Rainforest Connection (USA), Crisis Text Line, Inc. (USA), TalkingPoints (USA), and WattTime Corporation (USA).

These grantees will gather next week in San Francisco to kickstart the AI Impact Challenge Accelerator, a six-month program run by Google Developers Launchpad, as reported by Google.

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