Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), an organization under the auspices of UNESCO, announced the launch of the “Compute for Climate Fellowship,” a program that is aimed at helping elevate global startups by creating solutions to address one of six areas of the climate crisis.
These areas include climate risk and resilience, food security, climate-related health, biodiversity and conservation, circular economy, and ESG analytics.
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The program is a first-of-its-kind global program supporting entrepreneurs and tech startups applying advanced cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to create new solutions that help address the climate crisis.
Based on the agreement, the Compute for Climate Fellowship will select startups with innovative ideas in this space and fully fund the building of their proofs of concept (POC). AWS has committed to giving the selected startups as many AWS credits as they need, allowing them free use of their tools and services to enable startups to effectively and successfully build a proof of concept.
These benefits include access to IRCAI and AWS experts in AI, sustainability, and ethics, as well as advanced computing services and technologies that include generative AI, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Applications have just opened today, and submissions will be accepted and selected on a rolling basis. Applications received by August 31, 2023, may eventually be chosen for development this year and will have the opportunity to be showcased at the “AWS’ re:Invent conference” in November. On the other hand, applications submitted after September 1, 2023, will be considered for development in 2024.
IRCAI and AWS will select proposals that think big, have the most innovative use of advanced cloud computing, and have the biggest promise for global impact. Through the fellowship, climate tech startups would also have access to a variety of technical resources to build their POCs.
Complex and pervasive problems brought about by climate change
Climate change has created some of the most complex and pervasive problems of our time. In the Philippines, the impact of climate change is immense and usually entails annual losses in GDP, sea level rise, extreme rainfall and rising temperatures, drought, threats to biodiversity and food security, as well as public health risks.
“Artificial intelligence is quickly developing as both an academic and practical discipline. At IRCAI, we aim not only to be a guiding post in the development of these new technologies but also to ensure they are a force for good for humanity,” said John Shawe Taylor, Director at IRCAI.
“Through this collaboration with AWS, we want to find some of the most innovative startups out there and help them ethically leverage AI and advanced computing to build groundbreaking solutions that address some of the key challenges created by the climate crisis,” he further stated.
IRCAI is now mapping out AI solutions across the world that are contributing to the advancements of the UN Global Sustainability Goals.
For its part, AWS is now supporting customers in developing early-warning systems for food insecurity, analytics for health equity in the context of climate change, as well as intelligence to power the circular economy.
With regard to the IRCAI partnership, AWS will also provide participants with credits to cover the POC build. In addition, all POCs will be designed under the guidelines of UNESCO’s Ethics Impact Assessment for Artificial Intelligence (EIAAI) to ensure that each solution is built with safe, trustworthy technology.
“Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our generation and our message to the innovators out there with this program is: bring us your boldest, most visionary ideas and we’ll help you build them for free,” said Howard Wright, VP and Global Head of Startups at AWS.
“By offering computing capabilities and access to new technologies, such as generative AI, to startups tackling climate-related challenges, the Compute for Climate Fellowship will continue our mission of driving sustainability through the cloud and hopefully help us change the course of the climate crisis,” he added.
For more details, check out https://ircai.org/compute-for-climate-fellowship. /JMC