AI – Fortune of the People
Posted by dcodeai on January 29th, 2021
Technology and industrialization have repeatedly been criticized for the damage to humanity and the natural environment and now when we are in “Industry 4.0”, technology can benefit society by eradicating poverty and improve the well-being of people with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Eradication of poverty is one of the most prioritized objectives of the United Nations in its Sustainable Goals Agenda (SGA) and the UN wants to achieve this objective by 2030. So, AI can fast-track this process. Let’s find out, how?
Initially, we would need the factors or variables and their corresponding data which would perform a major role in identifying the geographical regions of poverty. So the data collected must be of high quality as the traditional way of collecting the household data is very expensive and the existing economic data is not much reliable, therefore through AI and high-resolution satellite imagery data related to regions having affluent light at night, the number of agricultural lands and the number of water bodies a region possess and various other attributes are captured and then this data is passed into the AI models and regions of poverty are predicted with high accuracy and then any financial and non-financial aid, is provided to the needed regions efficiently and effectively.
AI and ML-based robots help in uplifting agriculture as 65% of the world’s population are dependent on agriculture. So AI robots and models capture the information related to crops, climate conditions, and various other factors including fertility and type of land, distribution of land, etc. are fed into the AI-based model and selection of crops resilient to the extreme climate conditions and other factors is done with the help of a genetic algorithm in AI. Therefore, this algorithm of AI would also help in plant breeding and further optimize the process of planting and harvesting of crops. These strategies would further overcome the fundamental problem of food shortage in the countries and would typically make them self-reliant.
Education is also one of the most important parameters to determine the extent of poverty and further reducing it. So ‘Simpler Voice’, an AI-based project was launched by IBM. Simpler Voice uses a combination of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Image Processing, the applications of AI, and converts complex text into simpler audio texts with visuals. So this project would help unprivileged students by reducing tuition fees, and other associated costs. It also guides low literate or illiterate people by giving a detailed description of the commodities in the form of audio and visuals. So apart from that AI helps in identifying the specific needs of the students and further assists them in various areas.
Thus, agriculture, education, basic services, and commodities like availability of electricity, water bodies, etc. are important determinants of poverty. With the help of AI, we can work with these determinants and their corresponding data to predict and identify the hotspots and take corrective action to provide relief to the most affected communities, better than any other traditional method. AI, with its applications, has a pivotal role to play in the upliftment of society. There has been no better time to take up AI as a learning path and begin your journey towards making the world better for everyone.
