SANTA CLARA — Intel has recognized emerging talent in AI through its fourth annual AI Global Impact Festival, which celebrates student-driven AI projects aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The festival, featuring participants from 25 countries, has spotlighted AI solutions tackling critical issues like sustainable agriculture, healthcare access, and education. Among the top winners were projects such as Audemy, an educational platform for blind students, and CMA, an AI tool designed to assist doctors in diagnosing and managing patient care.

The festival, held from October 9th, 2024, also introduced educational resources for the AI community, including self-paced lessons on AI applications in sports, space, and entrepreneurship. These courses, alongside previous content on generative and responsible AI, offer participants the chance to earn certificates while learning about impactful AI technologies.

Intel’s commitment to inclusive AI education was highlighted by its ongoing RISE Goals, which aim to expand digital readiness and teach AI skills to 30 million people across 30,000 institutions in 30 countries. As of now, Intel has trained over 7 million people globally, working in collaboration with governments and educational institutions to bridge the digital divide. This is part of Intel’s broader goal of fostering ethical AI practices and promoting responsible development across the tech industry.

Notable winners in the AI Changemakers competition included students from the U.S., Poland, Malaysia, Singapore, Moldova, and China. Projects ranged from AI-powered educational platforms to healthcare and environmental solutions. Additionally, the AI for Accessibility Award recognized innovations like “DysTherapy,” an AI app for dyslexia, and Ishaara, a platform that translates text and speech into Indian Sign Language.

Intel’s dedication to advancing AI technology while maintaining a focus on accessibility and social impact sets a powerful example for the tech community. The collaboration with global students demonstrates the immense potential of AI to address critical challenges worldwide.

The Winners: The following students were named Global Award winners for the AI Changemakers competition:

For the 13- to 17-year-old age group:

1. AUDEMY, U.S. – Crystal Yang: Audemy is a collection of audio-based games for blind students, powered by text-to-speech and speech recognition NLP models. This conversational interface game platform will have global and long-term impact in transforming education for blind students around the world.
2. CMA (Comprehensive Medical Assistant), Poland – Tomasz Kozłowski, Wojciech Czubak, Zofia Remi: CMA is an AI-based solution powered by Intel software and hardware designed to help doctors diagnose and manage patients. Integrating CMA into healthcare systems is one solution to improve health outcomes on a global scale.
3. AI Storage Sentinel, Malaysia – Chong Yao Ong, Zi Xuan Mok: AI Storage Sentinel is an AI-powered cabinet that uses cameras and machine learning algorithms to detect and record item locations, ensuring users always know where their belongings are.

For the 18-year-old+ age group:

1. AgriGate AI – Technology-enabled Rejuvenation of Soil, Singapore – Seth Olav Yong, Balasubramanian Manish, Lim Le Shi: This soil rejuvenation impact project leverages Intel technology to address urban soil compaction and land settling. Soil sensors, Intel AIxBoard and environmental units create a digital twin of soil health, monitored and managed through a large language model (LLM). This project enhances urban agriculture, reduces flood risks and stabilizes infrastructure.
2. Empowering Healthcare Equity: AI-driven Diagnostics for Underserved Communities, Moldova – Nikita Moglan, Daniela Malancea: This project was trained on a dataset of 20,000 images depicting lung diseases, eye fundus abnormalities, and thyroid conditions. The platform empowers users in healthcare with instant disease diagnosis and actionable insights to democratize access to accurate medical diagnostics.
3. OpenEdu4All Personalized Course Teaching Intelligent Support Platform, China – Jiarui Zhang, Qiming Zhang, Yuqing He: This project is based on a locally deployed large language model (LLM), combined with technologies to provide teachers and students with highly personalized and interactive teaching and learning support for all ages.

For the AI for Accessibility Award:

1. AI-based Customizable Dyslexia Education Application “DysTherapy,” Turkey – Arda Gökalp Batmaz, Ağa Saltıkalp, Efe Arda Ulun: This application provides personalized education for individuals with dyslexia through an AI-powered mobile application that produces and offers the content needed by each child, using NLP, computer vision, generative AI and classification methodologies.
2. Ishaara, India – Tanisha Kaur, Yatharth Wazir, Yashkumar Dubey: Ishaara is an AI-powered platform for translating text, speech and ISL across English and 12 Indian regional languages to enhance inclusion, improve accessibility and preserve ISL as a cultural heritage.
3. Pediatric Allergy Life Saver (PALS), Malaysia – Iris Yan Ning: PALS assists parents and caretakers in managing children’s allergies safely, through AI-powered symmetric semantic search of allergy symptoms using NLP and an AI allergen detector. It includes a digital allergy-driven information card and a classroom feature to help childcare centers manage allergy information with an AI safe meal generator.

Visit the Festival platform to view the winning projects now through Oct. 25 and check out last year’s winning projects.