Google awards $25 million in global AI impact grants

Google today awarded $25 million in grants to a range of organizations to help them apply machine learning to fight some of the world's biggest challenges. Recipients range from New York City's fire department, which wants to find ways to reduce emergency call response time, to an experiment to track air quality with sensors attached to mopeds in Uganda, information that may shape public policy. The program is also an extension of Google's AI for Social Good program, which provides flood forecasting to communities in India and is researching how to provide speech recognition for more people with disabilities. More than 2,600 applications were received since the contest was announced in October from 119 countries around the world, Google.org The news was announced today onstage at the Google I/O developer conference by CEO Sundar Pichai and AI head Jeff Dean.