Taiwanese university, NGOs among recipients of Google's AI funding

Taipei, May 5 (CNA) Two Taiwanese nonprofit organizations and one public university were among the 49 entities announced Monday that will get funding from the philanthropy Google.org to strengthen their artificial intelligence capacity.

The three Taiwanese recipients under the AI Opportunity Fund: Asia-Pacific are the Frontier Foundation, Taiwan, One-Forty, and National University of Tainan (NUTN), said Tina Lin (林雅芳) Monday in a blog entry (https://blog.google/intl/zh-tw/company-news/outreach-initiatives/ai-opportunity-fund/).

The Frontier Foundation has launched its own program aimed at boosting the AI literacy of underprivileged groups, while NUTN is dedicated to creating an ecosystem for AI education in southern Taiwan, said Lin, who heads Google's sales and business development operations in Taiwan.

One-Forty, meanwhile, has been teaching migrant workers AI-related skills in their native tongue, Lin said.

AI-driven economic transformation should be equitable and inclusive, and all workers should have the know-how and tools to take part in it, Lin said.

Fifty-eight percent of people in the Asia-Pacific region believe AI will change industries for the better, but only 15 percent have ever received AI-related training, Lin said, citing a recent report by Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN).

AVPN was commissioned by Google.org to select the recipients of the funding.

Through the fund, which covers "solopreneurs in India, household migrant workers in Singapore, and mentally and physically disabled people in Japan and their caregivers," Google makes sure everyone benefits from AI's potential, Lin said.

Google.org. will inject an additional US$12 million into the US$15 million fund to allow more workers, small businesses and nonprofits to fully integrate AI in their day-to-day operations, Lin said.