Dive Brief:
- Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is using AI to create maps of where people live and how their location affects their ability to connect to the Internet, according to The Verge.
- Facebook said the maps should help it determine which types of connectivity solutions work best for areas of the world currently without Internet access.
- As of now, approximately 10% of the world's population does not have access to Internet.
Dive Insight:
Working with Facebook's data science division, infrastructure unit and machine learning groups, Connectivity Lab analyzed 20 countries covering 21.6 million square kilometers, applying both machine learning and AI techniques to generate the maps.
The company says it will release the data to the general public later this year and hopes that others can use the data for more projects .
"We believe this data has many more impactful applications, such as socio-economic research and risk assessment for natural disasters," the company said in a statement.
The project is a big step forward for the growing field of AI. A number of companies, including Google, Microsoft and Accenture, have invested heavily in AI, but many of those projects are still in the research pipeline and the results are not yet widely publicized. Companies will continue to use cognitive computing and machine learning to revolutionize their businesses. As an example, yesterday IBM announced two European companies signed on to harness its Watson AI capabilities.
