Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence as the foundation for innovations

Be it for detecting plant diseases, predicting harvests, enabling voice-controlled access to health services and financial services or underpinning early warning systems for landslides and extreme weather – the use of artificial intelligence (AI) provides developing and emerging-market countries with effective new means of overcoming local challenges.

Artificial intelligence comprises various technologies that make it possible to mechanically reproduce certain human abilities. This may include automated product recommendations or chatbots that virtually answer enquiries from the public. AI is present in many parts of our everyday lives and has great potential for increasing efficiency and knowledge.

77 %

of the global population uses AI

50 %

of the global population used AI-based voice services in 2020 – and up to 8 billion such assistants are set to be in use by 2024

14

There has been a 14-fold increase in the number of companies established in the area of AI over the last two decades.

Projects

FAIR Forward

provides support in the area of voice technology for the foundation of the internet company Mozilla and its ‘Common Voice’ platform, on which people can ‘donate’ voice recordings in their native language. This means that anyone can record sentences, listen to sentences and check that the pronunciation is correct. There are now data records in 60 languages and several thousand hours of voice recordings in African languages that are otherwise under-represented in voice data records.

Lacuna Fund

is the first global initiative aiming to increase AI training data in developing and emerging-market countries. The Lacuna Fund provides data scientists, researchers and social enterprises in low- and medium-income countries with the resources they need to create selected data records that solve urgent problems in their communities.

Project website

Mbaza Chatbot

The Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) have launched the RBC – Mbaza application, a chatbot that provides all relevant information on COVID-19 in Rwanda. Through the app, Rwandans can access daily statistics on the number of cases and vaccinations, COVID-19 symptoms and prevention, and what to do if someone tests positive.

Weiterführende Informationen

Open for Good alliance for open and local AI training data
Website