Fifteen teams win $30 million to build open AI tools for public services
Google.org picked the winners from more than 2,600 proposals. Each works with a government, and the tools are meant to be open-source blueprints others can reuse.
Google.org has announced the 15 recipients of its $30 million Impact Challenge: AI for Government Innovation, chosen from more than 2,600 proposals worldwide.
The winners are academic institutions, social enterprises and non-profits that work alongside governments, such as state and national health ministries and municipal transit agencies, on problems including healthcare, infrastructure and emergency response. Code for America, which works with US state and local governments, is one of them.
What they get
Each recipient shares in the funding and receives several months of pro bono help from Google engineers and product experts through an accelerator, along with technical training and cloud credits. The projects are designed as open-source blueprints that other public bodies can adapt, from Illinois to Lagos to Nagoya.
The open question
Grants of this kind can move quickly where public budgets cannot. The test comes after the accelerator: whether the governments involved can run, maintain and pay for the tools once the pro bono help ends, and whether "open-source blueprint" means code that another city can really pick up.
Research desk, Online
Stories by the IQGov research desk are written from public documents, official data and on-record statements, which are listed and linked at the end of each piece.
