Amazon is giving money to broaden AI acceptance. The e-commerce giant on Monday said it's working with the US National Science Foundation to give a total of $10 million in research grants over the next three years to help improve fairness in artificial intelligence.
"We believe we must work closely with academic researchers to develop innovative solutions that address issues of fairness, transparency and accountability and to ensure that biases in data don't get embedded in the systems we create," Prem Natarajan, vice president and head scientist of Alexa at Amazon, wrote in a blog post. "Funded projects will help to enable broadened acceptance of AI systems, helping the US further capitalize on the potential of AI technologies."
This comes as Amazon faces criticism for selling Rekognition, facial recognition software that relies on AI and machine learning, to law enforcement agencies. Civil liberties groups, such as the ACLU, have raised concerns about the speedy adoption of facial recognition tech among US law enforcement agencies and the potential for its abuse, particularly against immigrants and people of color.
Amazon said specific topics of interest for its funding program with the NSF include transparency, explainability, accountability, potential biases and effects, inclusiveness and fairness in AI technology. Interested researchers can submit their letters of intent by May 10.
