Amazon CTO Werner Vogels illustrates how AI can be used for good. In his lively DLD24 talk, he presents many examples of real-world problems that are being solved using artificial intelligence – for example by optimizing agriculture, healthcare delivery and addressing environmental issues.
“You can’t understand where we are right now with AI without going back in history”, Vogels says before he gives a brief overview of the development of artificial intelligence, from the 1950s until now.
In some shape or form, people have used AI for years without paying much attention to it, Vogel notes. “Recommendations, how we manage reviews, how we protect you from fraud – all of that is AI.”
The focus of Vogel’s talk lies on solving really hard problems for mankind using AI”.
Watch the video to hear more about Vogel’s video series “Now Go Build” and the startups mentioned in his talk:
- “Hara gives people an identity, measures the plot of land that they own, measures the yield, puts all of that in a massive database, runs AI over that, and then provides that information to banks and stewards.”
- “There is an organization in the Philippines, just outside Manila, called the International Rice Research Institute. Their goal is to eradicate hunger among those people who depend on rice.”
- “Precision AI is a company that uses drones to fly over fields and do precision fertilization of individual plants.”
- “Fish farming is the most efficient way to create protein”, Vogels notes. “There are challenges in fish farming. But a company called Aquabyte has found a way around that… They make use of computer vision to identify the individual fish, to track them, to track their health.”
- “When you control offshore wind farms you typically have these massive old ships that do this. Xocean wants to use unmanned vehicles. It’s much cheaper and I think they saved something like 500,000 tons of CO2 already.”
- “Two billion people do not have access to healthcare at all”, Vogels observes. SwoopAero solves the issue of remote access to vaccines and healthcare. “They have built drones that can deliver medicine out in remote areas.”
- “Dr. Consulta is a private organization, they have 200 clinics in favelas in and around Brazil, and those people really need it. They make use of AI to drive the cost of healthcare down to a point that it becomes affordable for everybody in those communities.”
- CergenX tackles another health issue with AI. “1 in 200 newborns will have some form of brain injury”, Vogels says. “In general, these brain injuries are not detected until months or years later, when it’s too late.” CergenX have developed an EEG test for newborns that “runs for a few minutes, and immediately they can detect whether there has been a brain injury or not”.
- “A non-profit organization I’m really proud of working with is Thorn”, Vogels says. “Their goal is to develop technologies to eliminate sexual child abuse online.”
Access to good data is key to building beneficial products, Vogel emphasizes – but equally important is the intention.
“We as technologists have a responsibility to solve the world’s hardest problems”, the Amazon CTO says. “We can. We have the technology for that.”
