The Rockefeller Foundation
Establishes Atlas AI - New Startup to Generate
Actionable Intelligence on Global Development Challenges
Feb. 6, 2019
The Rockefeller Foundation marked
the public launch of Atlas AI, a social enterprise
established by the Foundation and a team of Stanford
University professors to develop data products to
support global development. Atlas AI works at the
intersection of development economics, crop science,
remote sensing, and artificial intelligence to generate
detailed insights on poverty, crop yield and economic
trends across Sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier this week,
Atlas AI named Victoria Coleman, previously Chief
Technology Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, as the
organization's first Chief Executive Officer.
A B-Corporation founded
in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation in 2018,
Atlas AI uses machine learning algorithms and a rich
array of ground truth data to estimate economic activity
and crop yield from satellite imagery. Atlas AI
validates its models against gold standard datasets
collected by multilateral partners in the field, and
their methods are backed by rigorously peer reviewed
scientific research.
"Atlas AI is an innovative model
for translating the best research thinking into products
and services that accelerate sustainable development.
Part of The Rockefeller Foundation's vision is to unlock
AI's tremendous potential to improve people's well-being
while mitigating downside risks," said Zia Khan, Vice
President of Innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation.
"We're tremendously excited to welcome Victoria as Atlas
AI's new CEO. We conducted an extensive search and she
brings a unique combination of skills and experiences to
complement a world-class team."
The reality is that it's difficult
to reach people living at or near the poverty line with
critical information and services, especially if they
are not online. Fielding a census or survey is time
consuming and remarkably expensive—particularly for
low-income, fragile, and conflict-affected countries.
Atlas AI was founded to solve these challenges,
delivering information more quickly and
cost-effectively, and with greater accuracy and detail.
Based on years of cutting-edge
research, Atlas AI was launched by professors David
Lobell, Stefano Ermon, and Marshall Burke of Stanford
University to give decision-makers in developing
countries access to low-cost, cutting-edge data. Experts
in artificial intelligence, data science, and
development economics, Lobell, Ermon and Burke had
already shown that satellite imagery can be used to map
poverty and crop yields in Africa with a combination of
economic data, space technology, and machine learning
algorithms. Over the last seven months they began
building Atlas AI with support from The Rockefeller
Foundation, working with partner organizations in Africa
to test and operationalize new products, including
high-resolution datasets on wealth, consumption, and
agricultural yields.
Atlas AI has assembled a team of
the best scientists and engineers in the world with the
passion and creativity to make a positive difference.
Today, Atlas AI announced Victoria Coleman as the
organization's first CEO. As CTO at the Wikimedia
Foundation – the non-profit organization behind
Wikipedia, one of the world's largest and most popular
web properties – Ms. Coleman set the vision and strategy
for technology and operations for Wikimedia projects in
collaboration with the Wiki community. Previously, as
Vice President Engineering at Yahoo! Inc., she led the
company's web services at scale. Before joining Yahoo!,
Ms. Coleman served as Vice President, Emerging
Technologies at Nokia. Throughout her career, she has
demonstrated a commitment to open data, a crucial part
of Atlas AI's mission. As a public benefit corporation,
the company will support an open analytics platform
allowing the public to browse economic datasets for the
developing world, at sub-national resolution.
While private-sector businesses
have been building and deploying artificial intelligence
for years, most organizations in the non-profit, civic,
and public sectors have yet to robustly apply these
techniques towards the complex challenges they address.
They have a strong appetite to use applied data to make
their work go farther, faster, and ultimately help more
people – but they may lack access to the skill sets and
resources to do so in their context.
In an expanding effort to build the
field of data science for social impact, in January 2019
The Rockefeller Foundation announced the creation of the
Data Science for Social Impact collaborative in
partnership with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive
Growth. The first activity by the collaborative was
$20-million in funding to DataKind, a global non-profit
that connects data science talent with social
organizations – harnessing the power of data science and
AI in the service of humanity.
As a science-driven philanthropy
focused on partnering for the greatest impact, The
Rockefeller Foundation supports the growth and success
of Atlas AI so that its cutting-edge data products and
services get to those who need them most. The Foundation
maintains a seat on Atlas AI's Board of Directors and
will continue to be an active partner focused on
long-term stewardship of results-oriented, global human
development outcomes.
Subscribe to talksatellite weekly newsletter -
circ@talksatellite.com
|