
Google launches an AI contest for social good - saranshk
https://ai.google/social-good/impact-challenge
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rememberlenny
Summary: $25M for projects in a wide array of categories. Grants are $500K to
$2M for one to three years of deliverables.

Application of questions can be found here:
[https://ai.google/static/documents/impact-challenge-
applicat...](https://ai.google/static/documents/impact-challenge-
application.pdf)

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d--b
This is weird.

1\. Why does it need AI? Why not just fund stuff that do social good? Instead
of giving out computing credits that will eventually run out.

2\. The successful projects joins a startup accelerator. Wtf?

This guys really lost track of what charity means.

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__s
re 1, rephrase that on funding mosquito nets specifically

1\. Why does it need mosquito nets? Why not just fund stuff that do social
good? Instead of giving out mosquito nets that will eventually deterioate

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rinchik
This is awesome! "crowdsourcing" AI tech is a pretty smart business move, esp
considering it's wrapped with "social good". This initiative can bring a lot
of talented and sentimental minds together, and who knows.. it can possibly
put a start to a next google product! And if nothing comes out of it.. who
cares? Still a marketing win (assuming this gains some traction). I expected
nothing less from the idle minds at this corp.

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drb91
You said so much without pointing out any material benefits to humanity.

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5partan
Drop the advertising business, social good automatically increases, no AI
needed :)

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mac01021
Are you saying that the world was better off before google?

Or that there's a practical, socially preferable way for google to sustain its
search engine without ad revenue?

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tchaffee
Is this anything like "don't be evil"? I want to try to not be cynical. But so
much of ethical concern, especially regarding privacy, has come out of the
Google corner in the past few years that the "for social good" part instantly
makes me paranoid about what it will really eventually be used for.

And the story [1] about Google patenting a person's work after an interview
comes to mind.

Having got that off my chest, hopefully the participants read the legal terms
very carefully and might even consider having a lawyer review them.

[1] [https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-
idea](https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea)

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backpropaganda
I hate the term "AI for social good", because it reminds me that the default
use of AI today is actually far from being a social good. I wish "AI for
social good" was not a thing, and default use cases of AI was for good, social
or otherwise.

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2muchcoffeeman
I’ll just leave this here.

[https://www.faception.com/](https://www.faception.com/)

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i_am_nomad
Plenty of research suggests that the human brain already does this, and does
so effectively, like it or not. But translating this into an algorithm is
disturbing.

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taneq
Of course it does - "I don't like the look of that guy". "Dodgy looking
fellow". "He had an honest face". etc. The basic principle as a first-pass
heuristic is tried and tested. Kneejerk reactions to this kind of tech always
seem to completely ignore the question of whether it's actually effective.

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toufiqbarhamov
I think people do realize that it’s codifying the “science” of “Ah reckon” and
realize that same heuristic is famously terrible. Coding bias intentionally
into an algorithm seems more like a thin justification for pre-existing
profiling than any breakthrough in reading faces. It’s not hard to imagine the
same behavior we seem today, but now with the excuse that “The algorithm did
it.”

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Nasrudith
Cynically I suspect that may be the point. I refer to such things as bias
laundering. There is a very long history of "objective" measures that were
tailor made to collar hated groups.

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Eli_P
Excerpted from their principles[1]:

[...] we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

1\. that cause or are likely to cause overall harm [...] 2\. [...] Weapons
[...] 3\. [...] that gather or use information for surveillance [...] 4\.
[...] whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international
law and human rights [...]

[...] As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve. [...]

The last sentence gave me a crack, it was definitely generated by some
DeepMind-AI called DeepSarcasm.

[1] [https://ai.google/principles/](https://ai.google/principles/)

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youtea
As a small social enterprise with ambitions to use data to improve the work of
local health/activity/wellbeing charities, the offer of help appeals to us so
we're applying. I get the various arguments here but on balance, what would we
achieve by denying their help.

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m0zg
Quick, someone suggest an AI-based project to defeat Chinese censorship. :-)

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piyush_soni
The negativity here is saddening. So what if it is for PR? How many other
companies are doing these things even for that? Isn't it eventually promoting
AI projects that have at least some social good in their objectives?

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charlesism
Google collects sensitive data on every hapless internet user. A contest "for
social good" should start by helping Google brainstorm a new business model.
The one they have now is poison.

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piyush_soni
Given Google is already doing that (collecting anonymized data), wouldn't it
be overall better if it also puts that to some good use?

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newscracker
> Given Google is already doing that (collecting anonymized data), wouldn't it
> be overall better if it also puts that to some good use?

Given Google is already doing surreptitious stuff and is generally anti-
privacy, it ought to look at stop doing those first. Stealing from people and
doing "good" with that is not an excuse for stealing, especially when most of
the victims are common folk (even if one follows a Robin Hood principle).

Also, I didn't get the part about Google "collecting anonymized data". Google
collects precise, personally identifiable data because that's what pays the
bills for its chosen business model (similar to Facebook, which is far worse).
Anonymization may happen down the line for certain purposes and anonymized
data may be all that Google is able to get from certain sources.

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mda
Stealing from people? huh?

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rum3
Are they going to patent the idea behind your back aswell?

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imrehg
> Who owns the intellectual property created by the grant recipients?

> We believe that projects supported by our funding should be able to benefit
> everyone. If you are selected to receive a grant, the standard grant
> agreement will require any intellectual property created with grant funding
> from Google be made available for free to the public under a permissive open
> source license.

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rum3
And for the projects that get denied?

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kkarakk
_handwaves_ these are not the ideas you thought of

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ThomPete
AI for social good is one of those things that are kind of absurd in it's very
premise.

AI is not a thing we program to then deliver abstract terms like social good.
It's a thing we program to do specific things which might then end up being
used to do social good.

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BucketSort
Yeah... who ever suggested "AI IS a thing we program to then deliver abstract
terms like social good"? Are you refuting a notion that no one holds? Of
course the contest at hand is to use AI technology to solve various problems
we deem to be socially good. Not to rigorously define social good and have an
AI solve it.

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mrfusion
The deadline for applications is in two days. January 22.

Looks like this was launched a few months ago?

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joshvm
Yes, this was online before Christmas (at least)

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LaserToy
What is AI?

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joshmn
SELECT with GROUP BY.

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LaserToy
That is advanced one. I thought current state of the at is a fine skill of
throwing things against a wall and seeing if they stick

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S4M
What you just described is called reinforcement learning.

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exabrial
No, Google in 2003 may have, but today's Google is only interested in
exploiting your friends and family.

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Ibethewalrus
Spec work?

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sudoaza
AI communism is here

