Original Link: https://thegoodaipod.substack.com/p/-ai-startups-building-a-better-world
🤖 AI Startups Building a Better 🌎
Jul 29, 2020
👋🏽 Welcome to Doing Well by Doing Good: The New Startup Model, a newsletter highlighting the startups aiming to be profitable with a purpose.
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AI In the News
AI seems to always be in the news, whether it’s Elon Musk tweeting about our inevitable merger with AI
Elon Musk 🌹 @elonmuskThis would solve a lot of brain/spine injuries & is ultimately essential for AI symbiosis[12:11 AM ∙ Jul 19, 2020
28,891Likes1,103Retweets](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1284642001888047104)
Or excited developers messing with the latest generative language model recently released as an API by Open AI, GPT-3 and doing some really creative work:
- Generating AI poetry
- Generating frontend web code (React, CSS, etc)
Harley Turan @hturanHere’s GPT-3 generating React components based on a variable name alone, using the @OpenAI API. 
2,739Likes770Retweets](https://twitter.com/hturan/status/1282261783147958272)
Zoli Szőgyényi @zolidevThanks to @gdb I had the occasion to play around with @OpenAI’s GPT-3 and I’m amazed! I built a @tailwindcss code generator and the results are quite spectacular. There’s still much work to do, but it looks promising! You can sign up at gpt-tailwind.com for early access.
[5:16 PM ∙ Jul 23, 2020
8Likes4Retweets](https://twitter.com/zolidev/status/1286349416530620416)
- Or answering questions about American History
Mckay Wrigley @mckaywrigleyGPT-3 is going to completely change education. Watch it generate a 10 question test on American history. Then watch it answer those 10 questions. 
653Likes155Retweets](https://twitter.com/mckaywrigley/status/1285827683776004096)
P.S. If you’re interested, check out some explainers on GPT-3 here:animated blog, some more details, comparison to other models , original paper. For a more comprehensive list on GPT-3 related projects check this out
AI is here to stay and the news will keep on rolling in. But while the AI hype continues, the applications are slowly becoming more and more practical
Using AI to Do Well by Doing Good
AI [or ML , or Statistics with Compute Power , whatever you call it] is a topic near and dear to my own heart because I practice it daily, and time and time again, it proves to be an enabling technology that has the potential to disrupt every industry, much like seminal technologies like smartphones , the internet , telephones , or of course our favorite…
But…this often misses the point. AI is NOT a cure-all for every problem. Let’s not forget that 13% of the world still doesn’t have access to actual electricityand 40% doesn’t have access to clean cooking fuels. There are still some serious global problems that need to be solved and AI, along with other emerging technologies, have the potential to both make it better or worse.
So how is AI being used as a force for Doing Good today? The nonprofit organization AI 4 Good organization puts it best —
_To date, the unbalanced nature of incentives and funding for Artificial Intelligence research has favored commercial applications , such as defense and advertising, at the expense of altruistic applications. Artificial Intelligence research must be applied beyond these sectors — to help solve social, economic, and environmental problems — if it will benefit society to the fullest extent possible. _
It’s true that AI has been used first where large checks and a tech-forward mindset converge leaving the socioeconomic divide, environmental destruction, and other global challenges as far seconds.
At the same time “AI for Social Good” initiatives are becoming more and more popular at Google, Facebook, and as a talking point for recommendations by McKinsey, BCG, and blogs all over the internet.
But what if AI companies build in capital incentives to solve these challenges today?
In this post, we identify the AI startups [defined as companies where AI is core to enabling their product] that are merging commercial **** applications with solving social, economic, and environmental challenges. In other words — Doing Well by Doing Good.
Binah.AI
Binah.AI is a Series B healthtech company focused on bringing healthcare analytics to everyone, bridging the social divide through data. AI is used to measure key vitals directly from a smartphone camera removing the need for expensive wearables.
Mission: Removing the missing link in digital healthcare. Enhancing personal wellness. Today.
Product / Service: An SDK which uses AI-based video analysis technology to identify a number of vital signs using just a smartphone camera as well as an enterprise offering for employers to monitor employee health.
Doing Well: Sells subscriptions to either its platform or SDK offering to enterprises who then make it available to individuals.
Doing Good: Through its customers, Binah enables digital healthcare to be accessed by anyone removing the need for expensive wearables and accessories. With only a smartphone (nearly 3.5B smartphone users globally), basic vitals previously unavailable, are made available to individuals and healthcare professionals.
One Concern
One Concern is Series B climate tech company focused on solving global planetary resilience through innovative technology solution. AI is used to enable new rapid and dynamic measurement of resilience, which previously has only been done through more static physics-based approaches.
Mission: To build resilience before, during, and after a natural disaster.
Product / Service: Software for governments, enterprises, and financial services to better respond to and prepare for natural disasters.
Doing Well: Revenue is generated through subscriptions to a SaaS platform.
Doing Good: Each subscription sold, improves the customer’s ability to build a resilient business, community, or financial structure. For governments, this directly saves lives, for businesses, it saves livelihoods, and for financial services it funds resilience and recovery efforts to help communities and businesses continue to function.
SkillLab
SkillLab is an early stage startup based in the EU, using AI to better match refugees to available education and employment opportunities.
Mission : EMPOWERING JOB SEEKERS. We believe that no person should be excluded from opportunity simply because their skills are invisible. That is why we help people express their skills and uncover pathways to social and economic participation.
Product / Service : An application using AI to match employment and educational services to individuals to provide personal career orientation at scale.
Doing Well : SkillLab makes money by partnering with enterprises looking for labor or organizations looking to train and educate future members of the workforce.
Doing Good : Refugees in the EU are some of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to the labor market. SkillLab is focused on helping the refugee segment launch their career in a new country by using AI-enabled matching algorithms to recommend education and employment opportunities, thereby enabling better social and economic participation within the EU.
AI startups have been a fad for the last 5-10 years, and have become an easy way to raise money for everything from sales tools, to improved ad targeting. As the technology progresses and moves from quick wins (e.g. AI poetry 😛) to lasting change , more and more for-profit AI Social Enterprises are coming out of the woodwork and finding ways to Do Well by Doing Good, and we’ll keep you posted as they happen.
I’ll leave you with an optimistic quote which hopefully holds true over the coming years.
“The coming era of Artificial Intelligence will not be the era of war, but be the era of deep compassion, non-violence, and love.” - Amit Ray, founder of the Compassionate AI Movement
As always, thanks for the reading and if you know of any startups that are Doing Well by Doing Good, always looking forward to chatting.
Loyal Subject to our Robot Overlords,
Anand