Google.org launches $20M generative AI accelerator program

Google.org, Google’s charitable wing, is launching a brand new program to assist fund nonprofits growing tech that leverages generative AI.

Known as Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI, this system is to be funded by $20 million in grants and embody 21 nonprofits to start out, together with Quill.org, an organization creating AI-powered instruments for scholar writing suggestions, and World Financial institution, which is constructing a generative AI app to make improvement analysis extra accessible.

Along with funding, nonprofits within the six-week accelerator program will get entry to technical coaching, workshops, mentors and steering from an “AI coach.” And, by Google.org’s fellowship program, groups of Google staff will work with three of the nonprofits — Tarjimly, Advantages Information Belief and mRelief — full-time for as much as six months to assist launch their proposed generative AI instruments.

Tarjimly goals to make use of AI to translate languages for refugees, whereas Advantages Information Belief is tapping AI to create assistants that help caseworkers in serving to low-income candidates enroll in public advantages. mRelief, in the meantime, is designing a device to streamline the U.S. SNAP advantages utility course of.

“Generative AI will help social impression groups be extra productive, inventive and efficient in serving their communities,” Annie Lewin, director of world advocacy at Google.org, stated in a blog post. “Google.org funding recipients report that AI helps them obtain their targets in a single third of the time at almost half the price.”

In accordance with a PwrdBy survey, 73% of nonprofits imagine AI innovation aligns with their missions and 75% imagine AI makes their lives simpler, notably in areas like donor categorization, routine back-office duties and “mission-driven” initiatives. However there stay vital limitations for nonprofits trying to construct their very own AI options or undertake third-party merchandise — mainly price, assets and time.

Within the weblog submit, Lewin cites a Google.org survey that equally discovered that, whereas 4 in 5 nonprofits assume generative AI could also be relevant to their work, almost half at the moment aren’t utilizing the tech on account of a spread of inner and exterior roadblocks. “[These nonprofits] cite a scarcity of instruments, consciousness, coaching and funding as the most important limitations to adoption,” she stated.

Encouragingly, the variety of nonprofit AI-focused startups is starting to tick up.

Nonprofit accelerator Quick Ahead stated that this 12 months, greater than a 3rd of candidates for its newest class had been AI firms. And Crunchbase reports that, extra broadly, dozens of nonprofit organizations throughout the globe are dedicating work round moral approaches to AI, like AI ethics lab AlgorithmWatch, digital studying clinic JoyEducation, and conservation advocacy group Earth05.