736 million people in the world live below the international poverty
line of $1.90 a day. AI is being
widely used in multiple industries but can it help us solve the problems that
matter the most? Today we're gonna discuss the top five
uses of AI in alleviating poverty. Welcome to 5
Mins 5 Ideas, I'm your host Samanvay. AI and Data
Science is commonly used to improve revenues for
enterprises and companies that are already cash rich
but can AI help us solve some of the biggest
social problems in the world. Originally from a country
that is severely affected by poverty, it's very interesting to me
how AI can be used to solve global poverty.
Let's find out. The first use of ai in alleviating poverty is the use of
satellite imagery to monitor rate of development and to identify
areas that are affected by poverty. A group of
researchers at Stanford university have started using deep learning neural
networks to identify the best predictors of
poverty based on satellite imagery data and
poverty distribution data. One such predictor is the presence of
nightlife but the deep learning algorithms use
a number of other features that allow it to predict areas of poverty 81% to 99%
more accurately than models that solely use night light
as an indicator for economical well-being.
As you can see these algorithms can be used to first
identify areas that are in need of aid. The second use of ai
in alleviating poverty is to figure out the efficacy of
anti-poverty programs. As I mentioned previously
satellite imagery can be used to figure out the rate of development in a
particular area afflicted by poverty. So similarly
it can be used to measure whether or not anti-poverty programs are
working. As expected anti-poverty programs can
include financial aid in the form of welfare development aid and debt relief
as well as agricultural investment and programs for
women empowerment. The third use of AI in
alleviating poverty is using it to improve crop yields
according to world bank. 65% of poor
working adults make a living through agriculture so therefore
investment in agriculture is 4 times more effective
in reducing poverty as opposed to other economical
investments researchers at Carnegie Mellon university
have started an initiative called FarmView.
This helps farmers in India, Ethiopia and Nigeria improve the yield of the
crop sorghum. This crop is special due to its heat tolerant and drought
resistant characteristics. To improve the yield of a certain crop,
farmers have to manually figure out which characteristics contribute
to a higher yield. So therefore FarmView helps the farmer by automating that
process. Now there's many other uses of AI in agriculture and
I've previously covered them in another video. So if you're interested
in finding out more I'll link it here. The fourth
use of AI in alleviating poverty is through natural disaster
response. Each year the world health organization predicts that up to 160
million people will be affected by a natural disaster
and out of these 26 million people will be forced below
the poverty line. Geophysicist Paul Johnson at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory and his team are working on machine
learning techniques using the differences and similarity in
historic earthquake data to predict the occurrence of an
earthquake earlier and with higher accuracy. This helps in
evacuating residents before an earthquake occurs
and also identify the most earthquake prone
areas so that aid can be distributed more effectively
and that the relevant infrastructure can be reinforced
accordingly. These factors help prevent more people from going below the poverty
line as it helps highlight exactly who needs
the aid when. The final use of AI in alleviating
poverty is through providing tailored education. Obtaining an adequate
amount of education is strongly linked with a higher probability of a person
being able to get out of poverty ai based education systems are an impactful
way of providing cost-effective education
to rural areas. The use of an AI algorithm can also allow us to tailor
the education based on the student's level. So this is
extremely helpful in poverty stricken areas where in a
particular classroom you might find students with varying abilities. Hope you
learned how AI can be extremely useful in solving
some of our biggest social problems. If you enjoyed the video
don't forget to like, comment and subscribe and I'll see you
next time.