Google believes that AI can provide new ways of approaching problems and meaningfully improving people’s lives: it gives us another tool to explore and address hard, unanswered questions. While AI can help, it’s not a silver bullet: progress requires collaboration across all sectors of society. That’s why Google has been investing in AI for social good, including collaborative work in flood forecasting, helping people with atypical speech and diabetic eye disease. We’ve also funded organizations like Climate TRACE, a consortium of groups working to track global greenhouse gas emissions, and BlueConduit who’s working to create community-informed, open-sourced tools that map lead service lines.
Google announced support for six AI for Social Good projects in 2020 and thirty AI for Social Good projects in 2021. These projects were collaborations between academic and NGO partners. Pairs jointly developed project ideas at the workshop, hosted in partnership by Google Research, Google’s University Relations program, and Google.org. Pairs were encouraged to submit research proposals which were then evaluated by Google experts and selected for funding. We’ve also provided these selected projects with in-kind support, pro bono assistance, and more - all to help project teams realize real impact in the field. To see a sample of projects funded in the 2021 AI for Social Good Workshop, please see here.
We are focused on supporting scientific advances that positively impact the lives of communities that have not traditionally benefited from technological advancement. If you are a nonprofit and selected to receive funding, the standard funding agreement will require any intellectual property created with support from Google.org be made available to the public for free under a permissive open source license. Pre-existing IP is not subject to this requirement. The idea is to enable the research community to build upon this work. The initial projects have made significant strides, and we are confident that advancing a collaborative model is important to achieve on-the-ground and scientific impact in the field of AI for Social Good.
We are excited to announce the launch of our third call for applications for a collaborative workshop. Our goal is to bring together NGOs working on tough problems in their communities with academic experts and Google researchers to foster new collaborative solutions. The themes of the workshop are:
Sustainability & Climate
Economic opportunity
Project proposals that address either of the two above themes and aim to advance racial equity and justice are particularly of interest. We invite proposals from NGOs and Academics. More details below:
NGOs: We are requesting NGO applications that detail the problems you are facing and how AI might help unlock significant potential for impact. We encourage applications of AI that significantly impact an organization’s existing workflows or lead to the creation of new, innovative approaches.
We invite applications from NGOs working in Sustainability/Climate and Economic Opportunity in North, Central, and South America.
Academics: We are requesting applications from Academics that showcase interests in novel AI technologies for social good or in conducting research that evaluates a known AI technique in a novel field of application for social good.
We will prioritize academics with AI expertise or interest in Sustainability/Climate and Economic Opportunity.
Interested academic partners may indicate in their application how their expertise in these areas may apply to the proposed application areas.
We invite applications from Academics working in AI and related fields from universities in North, Central, and South America.
Google will help match NGOs and Academics based on problem statements and relevant AI expertise. However, if you already have an ongoing collaboration (NGO and Academic), you can indicate the partnership in the application and we will consider that in the matchmaking stage when finalizing invitations to the workshop.
Selected organizations and academic partners will be invited to a virtual workshop to jointly explore the development of AI for Social Good proposals.
Following the workshop, there will be an additional opportunity to submit joint academic-NGO proposals. A team of experts at Google will carefully review each proposal. Selected proposals will be eligible for additional funding and support from Google to help bring their ideas to life, which may include:
The opportunity to consult and collaborate with Google researchers, engineers, program and product managers, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers, and more
Access to Google Cloud credits to support computing needs
NGOs from the selected research proposals may be awarded $75,000 USD in funding from Google.org to support the project detailed in the research proposals.
Academics from the selected research proposals will be named “Impact Scholars” and recognized for their efforts in leading AI projects that have real-world impact. Impact Scholars will receive an unrestricted award of $30,000 USD.
Funded projects are expected to be scoped for a year. At the end of the year, projects that conduct innovative research and validate the initial hypothesis through pilot tests may be considered for additional funding and support.
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