Disabled veterans find work training AI

For a month, two disabled veterans in Texas labeled photos taken by drones, drawing lines around objects and identifying them. Their work will be used to train artificial intelligence systems.

Why it matters: Physical disabilities or a mental health condition like PTSD can make it difficult for a veteran to work in a traditional office or work site. But data labeling can be done on a computer from home.

What's happening: A software company, a defense contractor and two nonprofits are behind a project to provide AI training work for veterans.

• Working hours are flexible, which benefits veterans whose disability status prevents them from working full time, says Lindsay Box, executive director of IAM23, a veterans’ services organization.
• "It gives them a sense of meaning," says Box. "It gives them something to wake up for in the morning."

The drone-image project is for a large defense contractor. Machine vision systems need a lot of annotated data in order to learn to automatically identify objects.

• Nathaniel Gates, CEO of Alegion — the company that created the software the veterans used — wouldn’t say which contractor was involved.
• DEWIT, an Austin nonprofit that helped arrange the pilot program, hopes to sign on more than a dozen veterans for a second project.