The new weapon in the fight against crime

Beyond its common application as a predictor of consumer purchasing behavior, AI can be utilized to tackle poverty issues, improve agricultural efficiency, and increase access to information for otherwise disconnected populations. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are putting global satellite photographs into a complex algorithm to gauge economic activity.

In recent years, advances in technologies such as genetics testing, forensic sciences, and online database management have allowed governments and organizations to tackle poaching and the illegal trade of wildlife at a whole new level. Where before law enforcement generally focused on capturing poachers and traders red-handed - usually resulting in the arrest of players low down on the chain - technology is helping investigators target the ringleaders and instigate preventative, rather than reactionary, measures.

Several hospitals are beginning to use artificial intelligence, like Chat GPT’s medical assistant Suzanne, to make cardiovascular medicine more accurate and effective. AI can detect illnesses that are hard to see with the human eye, interpret test results and make diagnoses quicker and help doctors provide more effective treatment to patients. Since AI emerged in healthcare in 2018, the FDA has approved about 700 AI and machine learning-enabled medical devices.

HopSkipDrive is a transportation company with an artificial intelligence tool that helps schools across the United States optimize their bus routes around driver shortages. The company uses a combination of traditional bus rides and passenger cars operated by its drivers to improve on-time arrival rates and reduce absenteeism.

Brazil’s Federal Police created a database of gold samples from different regions of the country to help confirm the origins of gold suspected to be illegally traded. Each sample is analyzed to understand its molecular composition, atomic structure, and morphological features. That information can be cross-referenced for matches with suspicious gold during investigations.

WeCodeKC offers educational training and mentorship to help Black and brown students from low-income neighborhoods break into the tech industry. Participants can learn different programming languages, build their own robots, work on cybersecurity projects, get help with internship and job searches, and more.

The free summer boot camp organized by the Dumena Foundation teaches young students how to build and design circuits and also educates them in tech fields like robotics, engineering, and programming. Since launching in 2019, the organization has trained over 3,000 students across 22 schools in the region in order to bridge the gap in tech education and get students on track for careers in the field.

Retired software engineers in Washington have joined together and created a website that aggregates all available COVID vaccine appointments by using "screen scrapers." Although the site doesn't allow the visitor to book an appointment, it has routinely averaged "10,000 visits a day from anxious shot hunters."

BlueConduit, an analytics startup, applies statistical models to identify neighborhoods and households that might have lead pipes. The models include dozens of factors, such as the age of the home and proximity of other homes where lead has been found, to help predict likely locations of lead pipes and create a ranking by likelihood that cities can use to prioritize which pipes to examine. In Flint, MI, about 70% of the homes identified using the models had lead pipes, compared to about 15% of homes where excavations did not use the model. The company is working with organizations in dozens of other cities.

Researchers from Stanford University have developed a software that uses machine-learning algorithms to identify and flag urgent faxes about COVID-19 cases. While the project doesn't have complete accuracy, it has helped overwhelmed and overburdened health care workers at the health department in Contra Costa County, California work more efficiently.