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Like different expertise breakthroughs, AI presents monumental alternatives to reimagine options to the world’s urgent challenges. However, to harness AI’s energy and potential successfully, we should work collectively to make sure it’s used ethically, responsibly, and inclusively.
As a pure extension of our work to assist shut the info divide, Splunk is partnering throughout sectors on utilizing AI for good. We’re thrilled to depend Fast Forward, a corporation centered on scaling tech nonprofits, as a deeply valued accomplice in that work. For a few years, we’ve shared a dedication to empowering tech nonprofits, with an growing deal with the impactful, AI-powered nonprofits that make up the rising AI for Humanity motion.
Splunk is proud to assist Fast Forward’s Startup Accelerator and different key packages via grantmaking and skills-based volunteering, with Splunkers offering suggestions and experience to Accelerator portfolio organizations. Splunk’s strategic grantees embrace seven alums of Fast Forward’s Accelerator, one more approach we accomplice to assist promising tech nonprofits scale. We are excited to spotlight two of these excellent organizations: Closegap and Ersilia.
“AI-powered nonprofits are proving that AI can serve as a force for good across health, climate, and education. With partners like Splunk, we can accelerate this movement—supporting tech-driven solutions designed with humanity at their core.”
—Kevin Barenblat, co-founder of Fast Forward
Using AI to Identify Crises and Facilitate Meaningful Connection
The youth psychological well being disaster has intensified over the previous decade; but with college counseling departments understaffed and overwhelmed, many younger folks slip via the cracks. Today, the common delay between the onset of psychological well being wants and intervention is 11 years.
Closegap is on a mission to enhance the psychological well being of Okay-12 college students by equipping faculties with free, enjoyable, and interactive psychological well being check-ins.
Students reply a collection of questions on their feelings, vitality degree, and bodily wants, and the responses are organized and delivered to workers to permit for real-time intervention. Those check-ins have uncovered points from delicate to critical; they’ve helped stop suicides and uncover circumstances of self-harm, assault, and bullying. Closegap has served over 300,000 college students in all 50 states, with over 9 million check-ins.
AI helps Closegap additional enhance its effectiveness and attain. Closegap is utilizing deep studying strategies that enhance the triage and classification of scholar wants, serving to workers reply to college students quicker. It’s additionally utilizing giant language fashions (LLMs) to supply disaster alerts and generate messages to college students who want to communicate to an grownup. Those enhancements imply college workers can attain extra college students, do it quicker, and guarantee college students get the assist they want once they want it.
Ultimately, Closegap seeks to not solely assist educators reply to college students in disaster but additionally handle underlying points college students face, like stress and arguments with friends and oldsters. By following up after check-ins, educators and college students construct sturdy relationships rooted in empathy and belief, which improve psychological well-being and more healthy college communities.
Transforming Drug Discovery in Africa with AI/ML Technology
Africa faces a staggering burden of communicable ailments, exacerbated by restricted healthcare infrastructure and an underfunded drug improvement ecosystem. Recognizing this problem, Splunk social influence accomplice Ersilia, via its Open Source Initiative, is revolutionizing the struggle towards infectious ailments by equipping African scientists with cutting-edge AI/ML instruments whereas fostering a sustainable well being analysis ecosystem.
Leveraging Splunk’s expertise, funding, and expert worker experience, Ersilia has made important strides in enhancing drug discovery and empowering native researchers. Splunk’s assist has been instrumental in enabling Ersilia to streamline knowledge ingestion and analytics, saving over 700 hours of guide work yearly. This partnership has led to a 10x enchancment in antimalarial drug candidate discovery and facilitated the coaching of over 150 scientists, together with via workshops just like the “AI for Drug Discovery” occasion in Ghana.
Central to this collaboration is the Ersilia Model Hub, an open-source platform providing low-code entry to pre-trained AI/ML fashions tailor-made for uncared for and infectious illness analysis. Splunk’s contributions have enhanced the Hub’s monitoring and analytics capabilities, enabling Ersilia to trace mannequin utilization and enhance efficiency throughout its four-phase deployment plan—from inside monitoring to native deployment in low-resourced settings within the Global South.
Ersilia’s influence extends internationally, fostering partnerships throughout Africa, South America, and past, with organizations just like the H3D Centre in Cape Town and the University of Buea in Cameroon. With Splunk’s assist, Ersilia is advancing its mission to shut the info divide, democratize entry to AI applied sciences, and empower Africa-led scientific analysis to handle world well being inequities.
Working Together for a Human-Centered Future
Both nonprofits exemplify the extraordinary good that may consequence when cutting-edge AI allows innovation. Many social influence organizations are racing to leverage the transformative energy of AI, however Fast Forward’s Kevin Barenblat reminds us that the kind of tech-fueled success loved by Closegap and Ersilia not often occurs in a vacuum.
“We’re seeing a surge in nonprofits using AI to tackle global issues,” he notes. “But building sustainable, impactful solutions takes support. By partnering with AI-driven nonprofits, more companies can be part of creating a human-centered future.”
To be taught extra, go to Fast Forward’s web site to dive deeper into its Accelerator and different sources for nonprofits.
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