Exclusive: Jeff Bezos' plan to find AI climate wins
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The Bezos Earth Fund is unveiling the first recipients in its grant program to harness AI for biodiversity protection, sustainable proteins, improving power grids and more, according to details shared exclusively with Axios.
Why it matters: While AI's energy suck gets tons of attention, the Bezos program explores how AI can further climate and ecological work.
The big picture: On Wednesday, the fund is revealing the 24 grants under phase 1 of the $100 million "AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge" launched in 2024.
- Each project will receive an initial $50,000. Later this year, up to 15 of the most promising will receive $2 million.
- Initial recipients take part in an "innovation sprint" in which they refine the project and are matched with private-sector AI and tech experts for collaboration.
Driving the news: Just a few examples of projects from university researchers and nonprofits, per the Bezos fund summaries...
- Essential Impact, a nonprofit biosciences group, will create an AI tool to ID fungi in under-researched regions that produce shelf-stable proteins.
- Cornell University researchers are creating a platform that uses artificial cells and AI to "accelerate sustainable protein design and production without live cell fermentation."
- The National Audubon Society will "deploy AI-powered acoustic monitors across Latin America to track bird populations and measure conservation impact."
- The Wildlife Conservation Society will scale an "AI-enhanced reef monitoring platform that analyzes imagery 700 times faster" to model climate impacts and protect corals.
- Botanic Gardens Conservation International will use AI and drone imagery to monitor hundreds of threatened timber species and detect illegal logging.
- The University of Witwatersrand will use AI to "enhance weather forecasting in Africa by merging new ground data with satellite inputs." The goal is to produce medium-range forecasts up to 3,500 times faster to help with climate and farming resilience.
The intrigue: The program has a norm-breaking approach.
- It sought applicants with cool ideas and will help them leverage tech expertise, rather than making deep, longstanding AI experience the table stakes.
"The way we did this grand challenge was a little different, and it was deliberate in every way," Amen Ra Mashariki, the fund's head of AI and data strategies, said in an interview.
- One goal is bridging the gap between front-line environmental work and advanced tech innovation.
- "We want climate and nature experts, climate and nature people who have been on the ground solving these problems. We want to bring you into this AI revolution," he said.
State of play: There's a lot of interest in using AI for environmental aims.
- Mashariki said the program received over 1,200 proposals and considered ways the fund could best accelerate solutions.
- "We have to think about: what does philanthropy do that the market would not already jump in and take advantage of," he told Axios.
What we're watching: Which of the 24 initiatives move through to larger funding awards from the Bezos group.
