AI for Good

As with Topic 1, I want to focus Topic 2 on some of the ways in which AI is helping to make the world a better place.  In this case, we are going to look at an organization called AI for Good, which aims to help catalyze and share AI that is focused on the UN Sustainable Development goals.  In many ways, the previous topic also covered AI for good, in the sense that much of the science discovery is aimed at helping improve our healthcare or our prediction of extreme events, etc.  We will focus on the AI for Good organization for this topic but know that there are other such organizations out there and I would welcome your suggestions on them in the slack discussions!

Reading

• First read about the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  Please explore the page and dive into the goals to learn more, don’t just look at the 17 goals on the main page.  See why these goals are chosen and what progress is being made towards each.
• Then read about the AI for Good organization.  There are two related websites.  One seems to be the charitable foundation part and the other is the one where you will later watch some talks.
  • AI for Good (the charitable organization
  • AI for Good (the always online digital platform that runs a summit and ways to connect people)   

Exercises

• On the AI For good site run by the ITU, there is a HUGE list of talks about AI being used for a wide variety of applications.  Please explore both upcoming talks and their archive of talks (you can search by development goal or keyword, etc) and pick two talks to watch and then watch them!
• Share what videos you watched in the slack on #homework-quiz-questions.  Feel free to convince others that the video you watched was awesome and then, if you watched something that someone else watched, reply to that!  I am not mandating which videos you watch on purpose – I want you to find videos that are meaningful to your goals. With so many videos to choose from, you can find two that you are interested in.
• As with last week, the online students are invited to come to class in person or on zoom this week also.  I will be talking about some applications of AI for good focused on AI for weather in a variety of ways.  I will record for anyone who can’t come to class and will post the recording.  There is a separate canvas quiz for the hybrid and online sections for this and the zoom URL for class is in the online section.
• Go to the grading declaration on AI for Good