Artificial intelligence for social good: Big tech spins a new narrative

Two of the opening keynotes at the Artificial Intelligence Conference, hosted by O'Reilly Media, highlighted the corporate efforts by a couple of well-established technology companies to use artificial intelligence for social good. The SAS Institute's Mary Beth Ainsworth talked about how the analytics company is partnering with a nonprofit organization to study cheetah populations in southwest Africa by using computer vision. And Microsoft Corp.'s Jennifer Marsman talked about the company's efforts to use machine learning, the internet of things and new networking ideas to reduce world hunger. They are part of a growing collection of tech companies investing in projects that use artificial intelligence for social good. The list includes IBM and its IBM Watson AI XPrize, as well as Amazon and its "artificial intelligence for good manager."