UNESCO International Research Center Spotlights In 2022 Global Top 10 Outstanding AI Solutions – Forbes

Driving emerging AI driven solutions that provide measurable return on value across multiple ... [+] stakeholders and that are trustworthy, safe, human-centered for the benefit of people and humanity.

The insights and predictions in this article stem from my daily pro bono work across more than 100,00 CEOs, investors, experts, and scientists.

By 2030 AI will measurably influence and impact more than 8.5 billion people, across all sectors, and human & earth diverse ecosystems on an unprecedented scale.

In 2022, AI is the foundation for more than 70% global internet usage, explosion in edge devices / cloud computing / automation / autonomous growth, 40 plus billion IoT usage, new computer chip developments such as 3D / photonic / novel materials, biomedical innovation, digital transformation / reshaping, new education paradigms, quantum science, six plus hours of daily mobile usable in major markets across major devices amplified by 5G with 6G on the horizon, the rapid growth of the metaverse (trillions marketplace), businesses more than 60% adoption and scaling across the enterprise to more than 85% (2025), talent and reskilling programs, society and cultural changes. Thus, the recent news and events from UNESCO demands attention and inspires models of programmatic adoption of AI.

UNESCO ETHICS OF AI

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recommendations on the ethics of AI adopted by member states in November 2021 provides a foundational global agreement on AI Ethics. In turn this guides governments, research & development, business, industry, education, academia, non-profits, United Nations, media, investments, and startups. The objectives ultimately drive emerging AI driven solutions that provide measurable return on value across multiple stakeholders and that are trustworthy, safe, human-centered for the benefit of people and humanity.

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CENTER ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GLOBAL TOP 10 AI SOLUTIONS

IRCAI (International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence) under the auspices of UNESCO, launched an unprecedented program to identify the global top 100 AI solutions supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As noted on the UN Foundation site, Businesses embracing the SDGs await a $12 trillion economic opportunity. Combining SDGs with AI holds the potential to serve humankind and to bring benefits to individuals, countries, and businesses. Furthermore, AI can also help tackle economic, social, and environmental (ESG) challenges such as inequality, poverty, and climate change. AI is contributing solutions to the efforts of the global community to attain sustainable development goals.From a business standpoint, this is increasingly important as corporations report on their ESG (environmental, social, governance) and SDG-aligned activities. Examples in this area are the 4000 CEOs and leaders who are members of the Danish Management Society. For several years, they have undertaken measurable programs embracing digital reshaping and aligned to the SDGs.

TheIRCAI with global reach and scope, partially funded by the Republic of Slovenia,is uniquely focused on Artificial Intelligence. IRCAI functions as a Network of institutions and experts across the world, and a clearinghouse for relevant global AI projects. It provides an open and transparent dialogue, research on AI, discussions in the AI field, policy support to stakeholders around the world, and action plans and research roadmaps in the field of AI.IRCAI co-organizes events, in theWorld Series Events on AI.

The Global Top 100 were announced on the IRCAI website in December 17 2021. I estimate more than 6 million AI solutions across all domains, thus the top 100 is noteworthy. In addition, IRCAI created a program to spotlight the global top 10 AI solutions. These are AI solutions across governments, industry, non-profits, startups, all areas so again, makes the top 10 significant. These are the initial cohort of the Accelerator that IRCAI will be setting up in 2022.

This top 10 program rolled out in a series of posts from January 13, 2022 (profiling ASMSpotter) to February 15, 2022 (detailing NatureAlpha); each post dedicated to one of the top 10 and culminating in an international live event Feb 18, 2022, and now available on demand where leaders/founders from the global top 10 speak about their innovation solutions. The Permanent Mission of Slovenia to the UN and the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence organized the event on Feb 18.

The event details included keynote speakers, link to projects with the AI solution, industry category, and SDGs. The event is summarized below. I added the roles of the speakers from their LinkedIn profiles. I recommend examining the project links since it includes significant details of the AI solution. For example, country, SDG categories, industry categories, extensive project information details such as company or institution or organization / project name / description of AI solution, project excellence and scientific quality, scaling of impact to SDGs, scaling of AI solution, ethical aspects, website(s). You can hear their project summaries in each of their allocated 3 minutes speaking time at the Feb 28 event:

Bertie Vidgen (CEO co-founder),Rewire Socially Responsible AI for Online Safety (Internet),(SDG 5, 9, 16)

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

Angela Jorns (Senior Manager Good Governance and Responsible Mining),ASMSpotter (Mining),(SDG 12, 15)

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG 15: Life on Land

Catherine Nakalembe (Associate Research Professor University of Maryland),NASA Harvest (Agriculture) ,(SDG 1, 2, 10, 13, 15, 17)

SDG 1: No Poverty

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

SDG 10: Reduced Inequality

SDG 13: Climate Action

SDG 15: Life on Land

SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

Jonas Gramse (Advisor AI for local Innovation giz),FAIR Forward Artificial Intelligence for All(Health, Clean Energy), (SDG 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 17)

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 10: Reduced Inequality

SDG 13: Climate Action

SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

Lyric Jain (CEO Founder),Logically Intelligence(Civil Servants/Public Officials), (SDG 16)

SDG 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

Vian Sharif (Cofounder),NatureAlpha Biodiversity & nature metrics platform(Finance / Credit Companies), (SDG 6, 13, 14, 15, 17)

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

SDG 13: Climate Action

SDG 14: Life Below Water

SDG 15: Life on Land

SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

Vincenzo Di Nicola (Head of Technological Innovation and Digital Transformation INPS),An AI-powered classification email system to help the Italian Public Administration to better serve citizens(Public Employees), (SDG 8, 9)

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

Ulrich Scharf (Managing Director and Founder),SkillLab(Labor), (SDG 1, 4, 8, 10)

SDG 1: No Poverty

SDG 4: Quality Education

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 10: Reduced Inequality

Mohammed Ashour (Co-Founder and CEO Aspire Food Group),Novel Application of Advanced Manufacturing Approaches to High Quality Protein (Food Products Manufacturing),(SDG 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 17)

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG 13: Climate Action

SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

* Speaker unavailable for the event, MedCheX: An e-Alert system for automatically detecting pneumonia from chest X-rays (Health), (SDG 3, 10)

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

SDG 10: Reduced Inequality

SUMMARY DETAILS OF THE OUTSTANDING TOP 10 AI SOLUTIONS

Quoting extensively from the IRCAI:

-Rewire (UK) [company/institution], Rewire Socially Responsible AI for Online Safety [project]Rewire is developing AI tools for keeping people safe by automatically detecting whether online content contains hate. It can be used by platforms to moderate content and by other stakeholders (such as government, civil society and research agencies) to gain critical intelligence and monitor activity. Rewires AI is scalable, fast and can be used anywhere. Users of Rewire feed their text to the software and it automatically gives back scores showing whether the content is hateful. They have developed AI for English language and are now expanding it to other languages, including French, German, Spanish and Italian. Rewire leverages a unique human-and-model-in-the-loop approach to training AI, and offers unmatched performance, robustness and fairness. Many of the core innovations have been published in top-tier computer science academic conferences.

-INPS (the Social Security Administration of the Republic of Italy) and Accenture [company/institution], AI-powered classification email system to help the Italian Public Administration to better serve citizens [project]The project, developed by INPS (the Social Security Administration of the Republic of Italy) with Accenture, improves the current manual process of classifying emails sent by citizens and dispatching them to the appropriate office. It achieves its goal through innovative AI techniques and automatizing analysis of content and context of massive amounts of emails. Italian citizens send INPS more than 4 million emails each year (likely to increase with the pandemic): this automated email classification system is extremely valuable to INPS offices to respond more promptly to the citizens.

-dida Datenschmiede GmbH (Germany) [company/institution], ASMSpotter [project]ASMSpotter is a machine learning and AI software to automatically detect and monitor artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) on satellite imagery using novel computer vision technique. ASM is the source of livelihoods for more than 44 million people across 80 countries worldwide, and thus has huge potential to contribute to the achievement of the SGDs. At the same time, ASM can have immense negative impacts on human rights, development and the environment if not governed properly. Effective, continuous monitoring of ASM activity is a crucial component in addressing these challenges. ASMSpotter provides an efficient and effective AI solution by combining cutting edge machine learning with specialist expertise on ASM through the partnership between Dida and Levin Sources.

-GIZ GmbH (Germany) [company/institution], FAIR Forward [project] Artificial Intelligence for AllThe German Development Cooperation initiative FAIR Forward Artificial Intelligence for All strives for a more open, inclusive, and sustainable approach to AI on an international level. To achieve this, they are working together with six partner countries: Ghana, Rwanda, Kenia, South Africa, Uganda and India. Together, they pursue three main goals: 1) Strengthen local technical know-how on AI, 2) Remove entry barriers to AI by helping to build open AI training data sets as digital public goods, and 3) develop policy frameworks ready for AI.

-Logically (UK) [company/institution], Logically Intelligence [project]Founded in 2017 by MIT and Cambridge alum Lyric Jain, Logically combines advanced AI with one of the worlds largest dedicated fact-checking teams to help government bodies uncover and address harmful misinformation and deliberate disinformation. The companys mission is to enhance civic discourse, protect democratic debate and process, and provide access to trustworthy information.

-National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan) [company/institution], MedCheX: an e-Alert system for automatically detecting pneumonia from chest X-rays [project]AI pneumonia detection platform for suspected COVID-19 patients. The purpose, only takes a single second to assist front-line doctors in recognizing patients who are infected.

-NASA Harvest, University of Maryland (USA) [company/institution], NASA Harvest [project]Harvest is developing solutions that provide information on agricultural production and land use that support the attainment of several SDGs as well as monitoring their achievement via the Global Indicator Framework. Since November 2017, NASA Harvest has initiated or been involved in ~30 projects globally to improve tools and grow regional and local capacity to address food insecurity. Harvest maintains a satellite-based Global Agriculture Monitoring system (GLAM) developed by the University of Maryland with NASA and USDA. GLAM was customized for East Africa, enabling the implementation of the World Banks Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program. In Uganda, this program has supported >300,000 individuals in Karamoja, providing alternative livelihoods to smallholder farmers affected by drought. This system also enables the delivery of newer maps and solutions using ML including crop maps and yield forecasts. Harvests 2019 crop map of Togo was used to implement the YOLIM program which has served more than 50,000 people.

-NatureAlpha (UK) [company/institution], NatureAlpha Biodiversity & nature metrics platform [project] NatureAlpha provides science-based analytics for investors on nature and biodiversity, powered by an R&D partnership with Oxford University, leading geospatial and machine learning technology. NatureAlphas ability to influence and redirect capital towards biodiversity preservation could have far-reaching effects for billions of global citizens.

-Aspire Food Group & DarwinAI (Canada) [company/institution], Novel Application of Advanced Manufacturing Approaches to High Quality Protein [project]Aspire Food Group is a world leader in the commercial production and processing of crickets and cricket waste (frass) into nutritional ingredients for people, pets and plants. Aspire has developed a proprietary, innovative process to produce exceptional protein using minimal resources, a modular and scalable production, tight supply chains and low costs to generate outsized global impact. DarwinAI was founded by a world class academics team from the University of Waterloo. Their patented explainability technology enables human-in-the-loop decision making in AI systems. DarwinAI-Aspires deep learning solution analyzes more than 50 input parameters to unearth insights that can improve more than 15 output parameters, creating a loop that changes facility conditions to produce healthy crickets and maximize facility yields while minimizing costs (e.g., due to water, natural gas, electricity, etc.).

-SkillLab B.V. (Netherlands) [company/institution], SkillLab [project]SkillLabs AI-based solution empowers people to capture their skills, find education and jobs as well as generate tailored job applications. SkillLab makes career guidance accessible to marginalized people and provides a pathway to employment based on a skill-recognition system that is granular, technology-enabled, and data-driven. Users create a skill profile through an AI-based interview that builds on the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations framework (ESCO) which contains 13,485 skills and describes 2,942 occupations.

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UNESCO International Research Center Spotlights In 2022 Global Top 10 Outstanding AI Solutions - Forbes