AI for Good Challenge winners announced
The inaugural winners of the AI for Good Challenge have been announced, the challenge is a new national competition for high school students to tackle real world social and environmental challenges using Artificial Intelligence.
Out of thousands of applicants, the winning entry for division 1 (Years 7-9) came from Hale School in Western Australia. The team’s entry, SugAIr, is a diabetes management app that helps motivate children to monitor their Type 1 Diabetes through gamifying the injection process for individuals.
“We came up with SugaAIr because we wanted to help solve issues around diabetes and make diabetes management fun for those who have to go through the injection process daily,” says the team. “We’re fortunate at our school to learn about AI, but the AI for Good Challenge taught us how to put some of our thinking into practice. The opportunity was fun and super rewarding. Our inspiration comes from one of our team members who has dealt with diabetes from early childhood so to get national recognition makes it even greater.”
In division 2 (Years 10-12), first place was awarded to a team from St Peter’s Girls in South Australia who came up with ‘NAila’ – an AI enabled midwife robot that equips women with access to birthing information and health records connected to their obstetrician.
To encourage winners to continue their pursuit in developing solutions targeted to serving the greater good, first place winners won Microsoft Surface Pro laptops.
Microsoft Australia and professional learning organisation, Education Changemakers, have ran the competition, building a curriculum aligned to the Australian Curriculum standards aimed at supporting and educating teachers first, then students.
Steven Miller, director of education, Microsoft Australia says the organisation was thrilled to see the effort that went into many of the entries.
“At Microsoft, we know AI is one of the most powerful and impactful technologies in our society today. We’re passionate about challenging students to think beyond generic solutions and actually use an AI lens when it comes to solving real world problems. We’re trying to encourage critical thinking and this challenge was a great stepping-stone to do so, and the talent we have in schools around the country is incredible.”
Aaron Tait, CEO and co-founder, Education Changemakers, says, “This project has been a few months in the making, but bringing together some of the top ideas at today’s event has been an excellent opportunity to showcase some of the future talent we’ve got in this country and see just how passionate these students are about solving real world problems using AI.”
For more information on the AI for Good Challenge including teacher resources, prizes and information on how you can get involved next year, visit www.aiforgood.com.au.