Let AI affect humans? Xprize Teams Up with IBM to Create 2020 AI Challenge

The XPRIZE competition hopes to focus on issues that seem to be unsolvable in today's society or where there is no clear solution yet, by breaking the limits of humanity.

According to the techcrunch report, when it comes to artificial intelligence, closing your eyes, what is the picture that first surfaced in your mind? Is Hal 9000's command against humanity? Or is Ava brutally killing her maker? It's even possible that ARIIA is manipulating the entire country in a dark corner of the Pentagon.

These scenes may be a bit open-minded and unrealistic.

Now, a company called XPRIZE has teamed up with IBM to hold a challenge contest in hopes of exploring the more practical help and impact of artificial intelligence on humans in an anti-utopia way.

This contest was named IBM Watson AI Xprize. Entrants can now start registration and use the results of the research to demonstrate to humans within four years (the time of competition opening) how artificial intelligence technology should be used to solve people's concerns about health, climate change, transportation, space travel, robots, cities Major issues such as planning, medical surgery, education, and human rights.

Up to now, more than 1,000 people have participated in the registration process. The plan hopes to use the power of artificial intelligence to brainstorm ideas through team formation and work with everyone to find answers to the most pressing issues facing human beings. Among them, some participating teams may have received financial support from companies or angel investors, and some experimental laboratories, start-up companies, and company departments are teaming up, and some teams are participating individually.

Amir Banifatemi, head of the XPRIZE competition, said: "We think that this challenge is likely to attract a large number of companies to invest and will trigger a series of financing activities."

In addition, the multidisciplinary nature of this challenge is also exciting. These participating teams can not only be formed by people with professional and traditional skills, such as professional talents in the field of machine learning, but also can be composed of geniuses in cognitive sciences, mathematics, linguistics, and even design fields. This means that the professional diversity of the participating teams can be guaranteed. There is no specialization here, as long as you can come up with the research results, you can participate in the competition.

It is understood that the Challenge will officially start in March 2017 and will provide a series of participation awards and milestone awards. In addition, as the Challenge continues for many years, the final winning project is also likely to include emerging technologies that we have not yet seen in today's society.

The finals of the AI ​​Challenge will be held at TED2020. The winner will receive the US$3 million prize provided by IBM. The runner-up will receive a US$1 million prize and the third will receive a US$500,000 prize.

It is understood that XPRIZE was established in 1995 to help solve “the most important challenges in the world” by establishing some incentive awards and encourage technological innovations that benefit people. Previously, Xprize had already promoted several famous competitions. The most famous one was the Google-sponsored lunar exploration trophy. Participants in the project needed to send private unmanned spacecraft to space.

The XPrize-funded team not only includes spacecraft development, unmanned ocean exploration, but also human gene sequencing. The AI ​​Challenge teamed up with IBM is to establish and promote the concept of “let AI affect humans” among the global innovators and practitioners, and encourage entrepreneurs from all over the world to boldly try and innovate. , and finally to show humans how to make artificial intelligence technology a useful tool for humans.

On the XPRIZE website, it describes its vision like this:

The XPRIZE competition should spawn new industries and reform or rejuvenate existing industries and bring them lasting benefits. And, through the vision of a better future world, we inspire human hope. The winning team will prove to the world that what seemed to be no solution finally can be solved.

Via techcrunch