Artificial intelligence comp to tackle global challenges

$5 million in prize money is up for grabs for developer teams looking to tackle today’s biggest challenges using artificial intelligence (AI) in the global IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition.

Entrants will take on a fairly big commitment, since the competition will span four years. The top three finalists will have to pitch their ideas for the $3 million grand prize at TED 2020.

The competition is all about human-machine collaboration to solve some of humanity’s most pressing challenges; however, rather than set a goal for all teams, entrants can instead choose to create AI applications for any area of need that interests them, eg, health care, education, energy and environment, global development and exploration.

The prize money aims to accelerate the adoption of AI technologies and spark creative, innovative and audacious demonstrations of technology that is truly scalable.

XPRIZE, the company that offers incentivised global competitions and is also behind the $30 million Google Lunar comp, announced last week that registrations are now open until 1 December.

“In the coming decade, as XPRIZE strives to achieve its impact mission through incentive competitions and crowdsourcing, we see tremendous opportunity in this emerging generation of problem solvers to use AI to solve humanity’s grandest challenges,” said Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE. “The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE is intended to promote and progress the notion of ‘AI for impact’ among the global bold innovator crowd... as well as encourage newcomers to experiment and ultimately demonstrate how AI can be used as a tool for good.”

Teams will be judged based on the standards they set in their plans as well as the performance and scalability of their AI application, with the heaviest weight placed on the potential for achieving an exponential impact. Stephen Gold, vice president, IBM Watson said the competition is looking for developers, entrepreneurs and organisations that push the boundaries of human-machine collaboration, forever changing for the better the way in which we live and work.

A $1 million second-place prize and $500,000 third-place prize will be awarded to teams that receive the top scores from a panel of independent judges, with the final winner announced from the results of live in-person and online audience voting during TED2020.

Since the comp will be stretched out over four years, a total of $500,000 will be awarded by the judges for special accomplishments in the annual competitions along the way. For more information and to register to compete, visit ai.xprize.org.

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