Silicon Updates: Artificial Intelligence for Earth initiative by Microsoft at an AI event

Microsoft has stepped forward in bringing Artificial Intelligence into application. At an Artificial Intelligence (AI) event, recently, Microsoft has announced it AI initiative called AI for Earth. As technology is developing, it is causing huge damage to the environment. Addressing this issue, Microsoft is going to implement AI for sustainability. 

AI for Earth initiative by Microsoft

The AI for Earth initiative is focused on providing an opportunity to people and organisations to solve the environmental problems by enhancing access to the AI tools, alongside providing an opportunity to accelerate innovation from every individual. The initiative focuses on four major areas - Agriculture, water, biodiversity and climate change.

Challenges of AI for Earth by Microsoft

Agriculture - Researchers are stating that farmers should be capable of producing more crop utility in lesser areas of irrigation. They should be able to feed the fast-growing population with the lowest possible environmental impact. With AI for Earth, Microsoft plans to create a platform where farmers can rely on the AI tools to achieve the challenge.

Water - The rate of population growth in past two decades is much higher than that of the last century. In no much time, the fresh water available on the supply of earth's surface will exhaust the demand. With AI, people can model the available water and different ways to conserve. Microsoft claims that protecting and conservative usage of fresh water can be optimized with AI.

Biodiversity - We may know or not, honey bees are the major "catalysts" for the environment to flourish like nature. In the recent times, the number of honey bees has reduced drastically. As a result, honey bee farms came up to protect them. The reason behind this extinction is imbalance in biodiversity. With AI, the existence of such extincting species can be figured out and protected easily. With AI, we can know the extinction in numbers and work accordingly.

Climate change - Scientists are warning that the glaciers are melting with alarming rate, which can lead to increase in sea-level, which results in shrunk land area. If the area of land decreases, where the population is increasing the human race should face problems, which in in turn results in imbalance in the ecosystem. AI provides the capability to estimate the climatic conditions before hand and the causes of the climatic changes can be controlled accordingly.

Areas of focus by AI for Earth

Access, Education and Innovation are the key elements in achieving the four goals with AI for Earth. With Azure for Research AI for Earth award program, researchers and organization working on AI can gain access wide range of data to devise efficient solutions to the challenges. By educating the people with the AI tools, every individual can contribute their part to a better world, being specific to the contextual and regional problems. With the extent AI reaches every corner of the world paves a way to grab innovation from every corner. When the number of people working to find a solution, the innovation enhances and time taken to find a solution reduces drastically.