AI4D: Deep Learning Indaba - AI4D Applications |
Website | http://www.deeplearningindaba.com/ |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ai4d |
Submission deadline | August 14, 2019 |
This Call for Proposals invites individuals, grassroots organizations, initiatives, academic, and civil society institutions to submit their proposals for mini-projects within the 2019 Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) initiative. In a recent AI4D workshop in Nairobi, the African community outlined a roadmap, including recommendations for capacity building, governance, and innovation for ethical and locally relevant AI research and a commitment to advance AI innovations that will be in aid of the sustainable development agenda of Africa.
The AI4D Africa call is anticipated to last for 6 weeks, from June 6th to July 18th. The projects selected for funding will be notified by August 16th, 2019 and will be invited to present their solutions at the AI4D workshop during the Deep Learning Indaba 2019 conference. Selected projects will be monetarily awarded from USD 5,000 to USD 8,000, funding which will be disbursed as the project progresses, based on agreed timelines and project deliverables.
Important dates:
- June 6th, 2019 – Call for proposals release
- August 5th, 2019 – Proposal re-submission deadline
- August 16th, 2019 – Decision notification
- September 1st, 2019 – Expected start of the projects
- April, 2020 – Reporting of the project outcomes
Proposals that fall within the below categories are highly encouraged as they fall within our focus areas, however, all proposals will be evaluated equally.
- Future of Work
- Microwork, new forms of employment, etc
- Inclusion and gender
- Text and speech datasets, tools and resources for African languages
- Countering gender-based violence/harassment
- Applications that benefit women’s empowerment and well being
- Enabling the differently abled – tools and resources for the blind, deaf, etc.
- Governance
- Open Data
- Government Service Delivery (procurement, social services, etc.)
- Agriculture
- Computer Vision for Plant and Animal Disease Diagnostics
- Healthcare
- Healthcare access
- Computer Vision for Medical Diagnostics
- Supply Chain Management
- Natural language processing and disease outbreak surveillance
- Education
- Administrative Tasks Automation
- Personalized Learning
- Improving Learning Outcomes
- Transportation
- Disaster Management
- Climate change
A strong proposal is one that meets any or all of the following requirements:
- Result in the creation of a dataset. We propose that every dataset be accompanied with a datasheet that documents its motivation, composition, collection process, recommended uses, and so on. See this paper for further details. In addition, we would like that the dataset is kept free and open for public use (with ethical provisions being taken into account).
- Novel and motivated goal. Of particular interest are tasks that imply machine learning solutions different from the traditional setting, this includes legal, ethical and social aspects to the ML solutions.
- Challenging yet manageable task with scalable long-term vision. The task should be challenging in the sense that there is enough room for iteration and improvement from the initial solution. An initial solution should be attainable in a timeframe of 3 to 4 months.
- Domain accessibility to the general public. The notions presented in the project description should be accessible to the majority of machine learning and data mining practitioners, including ethicists, policymakers and other stakeholders from across sub-Saharan Africa who might not have excessive domain knowledge in AI or access to a powerful computational infrastructure.
Please keep the proposal concise, no more than 4 pages, including references.
Applications should include:
- Full names of lead(s)
- Affiliation(s)(if any)
- Email address(es)
- Phone number(s)
- Clearly stated objectives and expected outcomes
- Activity timelines
- Budget allocation
- A brief paragraph on long-term vision, if any
- Any other information you think we should know