Google has launched an “AI for Social Good” program to support artificial intelligence research and engineering with a focus on developing solutions for a range of global challenges.
From an October 29th Google Blog post by Jeff Dean (Google AI):
For the past few years we’ve been applying core Google AI research and engineering to projects with positive societal impact, including forecasting floods, protecting whales, and predicting famine. Today we’re unifying these efforts in a new program called AI for Social Good. We’re applying AI to a wide range of problems, partnering with external organizations to work toward solutions.
The program will apply these core research and engineering efforts to AI projects with the potential to create positive social impact through the Google AI Impact Challenge.
We want people from as many backgrounds as possible to surface problems that AI can help solve, and to be empowered to create solutions themselves. So as a part of AI for Social Good, we’re also launching the Google AI Impact Challenge, a global call for nonprofits, academics, and social enterprises from around the world to submit proposals on how they could use AI to help address some of the world’s greatest social, humanitarian and environmental problems.
With $25 million in funding from Google.org, the challenge will invite nonprofits, academics, and social enterprises from around the world to submit proposals on how they would use AI to address some of the world’s biggest social, humanitarian, and environmental problems. Google expects grants to range from $500,000 – $2,000,000, with the application deadline closing on January 22, 2019. Learn more about the Google AI Impact Challenge here.
As you might have seen, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently announced a new initiative to create a Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence, led by Yolanda Gil (University of Southern California and President-Elect of AAAI) and Bart Selman (Cornell University). The plan is to hold a series of workshops in the Fall/Winter of 2018/2019, which will result in a Roadmap to be produced in the Spring of 2019. The goal of the initiative is to identify challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls, and create a compelling report that will effectively inform future federal priorities.
In addition, the CCC, along with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), co-sponsored an AI for Social Good workshop in June 2016 in Washington, DC. This was one of five workshops that OSTP co-sponsored and held around the country to spur public dialogue on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and to identify challenges and opportunities related to AI. See the Artificial Intelligence for Social Good workshop report here.
