Last year, Google announced plans to open a new AI lab
in Africa. Now, Google AI Accra is open for business, and the
team there is working on building AI-powered solutions to real-world problems,
including helping communities in Africa and beyond to improve their lives.
Google uses Machine Learning (ML) and AI in all of its products
and AI and ML are used every day by people across the world, many of who don’t
even realise they’re using it. Machine learning is used for everything from
filtering out the spam in your email to powering the Google Assistant on your
smart speaker, from taking the perfect low-light photos on the Pixel 3 to
helping the world speak the same language through Google Translate.
Google recognises that it’s important for everyone that emerging
technology is socially beneficial and upholds the highest standards of
scientific excellence. Based on its seven guiding principles for ethical use of
AI and ML, Google is taking a thoughtful approach to help nurture an emerging
technology, which is outlined in depth here.
Google’s AI Centre was opened in Ghana because in order to build
technology that benefits people everywhere, it needs to be built by people with
a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints. The researchers of
Google AI centre in Accra bring a fresh perspective and expertise to build new
technologies in Africa that can contribute positively to life here, as well as
around the globe.
Google AI Accra forms part of the company’s structured efforts to
explore and integrate more diverse experiences / learnings beyond present-day
centres of innovation. ‘AI by Africa, for the world’ helps us highlight the
crucial role that this new centre will be playing in our vision of using AI to
solve problems for everyone, in every part of the world.
A strong focus areas for Google is how AI and ML can be used for
social good. We already see how machine learning is improving people’s lives,
from protecting us all from spam and fraud to making devices more accessible
via speech. Working with partners from such diverse fields as medicine,
transportation, environmental groups and small businesses can help to
evolve AI and ML tools to meet real-world challenges. This is why Google shares
its machine learning tools, so that organisations outside of Google can
benefit.
Google’s AI for Social Good program includes projects such as:
· Flood prediction:
Floods affect up to 250 million people, causing thousands of fatalities and
inflicting billions of dollars of economic damage every year. Google has
developed a system that combines physics-based modeling with AI to produce
earlier and more precise flood warnings.
· Earthquake aftershocks:
existing predictors are little better than chance. So we partnered with Harvard
researchers to apply AI to seismic data, and created a model that -- while far
from fully accurate -- can now do a much better job than previous models of
predicting where aftershocks will occur.
· Environmental
protection: 6 out of the 13 great whale species are still endangered; even
recovering species like humpbacks get entangled in fishing gear and hit by
ships. The first step is to know where the whales are. So we’re working with
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- we trained an AI model
with over 100,000 hours of underwater audio from 12 different sites in the
Pacific, and we can now not only find whale calls, but identify which species
is making them.
· Healthcare and
biology:
o We developed an
algorithm to predict heart
attacks and strokes simply from images of the retina -- no
needle or blood draw required!
o
Google researchers have helped doctors detect the spread of breast cancer
tumors -- the doctors and machine learning system are better working
together than either is alone.
·
Environment, agriculture, and natural science:
o Researchers at
Makerere University used TensorFlow to help farmers identify disease in the cassava plant, a major
food source in the developing world.
o A dairy farm in
Waynesboro, Georgia is using TensorFlow to keep cows healthier and more
productive, similar to the project in the
Netherlands
o Protecting
rainforests: Students in Los Angeles schools helped build 'guardian' devices that
use TensorFlow to listen for
chainsaws in rainforests in Brazil.
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