Google has turned its attention towards artificial intelligence development and how they can be beneficial to humanity. The company is launching a worldwide competition to give developers and AI experts the chance to research and develop AI with positive applications in the world.
The competition which is called the AI impact challenge was made known to the public at an event called AI For Social Good. The event which is being overseen by Google charitable arm Google.org which was hosted at the Company’s California office at Sunnyvale.
The competition is meant to spur developmental research in AI by non-profit organizations like individuals and academic institutions. The company stated it will grant awards up to $25 million to bring the best ideas into life.
Google is looking at initiatives that can solve issues of environmental welfare, wildlife preservation, and health care.
The company is also looking out for the elimination of human prejudices in Ai software. Remember that the company had been a victim itself of a software bias as it admitted that it had not been able to find a solution to its photo-tagging algorithm that identified black people as gorillas. This flaw inevitably led to the company scrapping up the feature in totality.
The company which has sometime in June made a public pledge about its commitment not to contribute to AI weaponry seems to follow its principles with the competition.
The company which had suffered a backlash for its involvement in “Project Maven” which is a US Department of Defense initiative has come out to debunk claims that the AI impact challenge is merely a ploy to soothe the public’s anger.
The head of Google AI division, Jeff Dean spoke to a group of reporters at the AI for Good event.
“This has been in the works for quite some time. We have been doing work in the search space that is socially beneficial and not directly related to commercial applications”.
The AI impact Challenge is open to non-profit organizations who will offer cloud resources to the participants. The competition is already open and accepted grantees will be announced at the Google I/O developer conference next year.
