Skip to the content.

AI For Mankind

AI For Mankind is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of mobilizing the tech community to work on world challenging problems using AI and Data. We organize tech talks, workshops, and hackathons. We want to build a grassroot community of volunteers creating solutions using AI and Data to bring positive impacts to society at large.

Together we can make things happen !

AI For Mankind was founded by Wei Shung Chung as a meetup group in April 2018. It was registered as a nonprofit organization in May 2019.

AI For Mankind’s Seeing the World project was selected as one of the Microsoft AI for Accessibility’s grantees. Read about Seeing the World project

Our wildfire smoke detection project was also selected for Microsoft AI For Earth’s grant.

Latest News on Wildfire Detection System.

Checkout some of our detection notification tweets.

tweet notification

help verify

retweets

Join Our Slack Channel

Sign up for Monthly Volunteers Sync up Meeting

Join Our Meetup Group

Follow Our Blog

Youtube Channel

Upcoming Events

Past Events

Learning Materials

Our Projects

  1. For 2020-02-05 fire captured by HPWREN camera hp-w-mobo-c, our detector detected the smoke 13 minutes after fire ignition.



  2. For 2020-03-06 fire captured by HPWREN camera mlo-n-mobo-c, our detector detected the smoke 3 minutes after fire ignition. See video below.




  3. For 2020-05-21 fire captured by HPWREN camera VEGMGMT ml-w-mobo-c, our detector detected the smoke 16 minutes after fire ignition.


    Wildfire Smoke Detector in Action

We ran AI For Mankind’s wildfire smoke detector aka “The Super Duper” against past HPWREN images of several fires, here are the promising results obtained.

We continue to organize a series of Lets Stop Wildfires Hackathons. You can learn more below.

2020 Lets Stop Wildfires Hackathon 2.0

2019 Lets Stop Wildfires Hackathon

Wildfire Smoke Detector in ActionWildfire Smoke Detector in Action



Once again, thank you to all our volunteers for their dedication and contribution. If you are interested in any of the projects, please join our slack channel or email us at ai.for.mankind@gmail.com


Past Hackathons

Participants in Hackathon Presentation Participants discussing in Hackathon Jigar Doshi, our very first speaker

See more event pictures.

Your tax-deductible donation today will help support our mission.

AI For Mankind is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN 84-1750651

Past Events

Past Speakers

Meet Our Volunteers

Rachael Creager Artificial Intelligence Fellow at Insight Data Science

Rachael Creager

“I joined AI For Mankind for the CORD-19 NLP hackathon, where I am working on improving search engines and topic modeling for Covid-19 researchers. I chose this project for its usefulness as well as for the learning experience.”

“It feels good to work on something bigger than yourself while learning skills you can use for the future!”

“AI For Mankind is also a great place to meet other technologists and to get exposure to different tools and ideas. The discussions during the hackathon lead me to try methods for topic modeling which I previously knew nothing about!”

Joe Tang Senior Software Engineer In Test and Treasurer of AI For Mankind

Joe Tang

“I joined AI For Mankind in 2018 and started working on the Seeing the World project, which was initiated with a goal of helping people who are blind or have low vision. The Seeing the World project showed me the idea that technology, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), can make a difference for people in need in our society.”

“Being a part of the team, I have been given the opportunity to meet many passionate volunteers with various backgrounds and skills, such as engineers, data scientists, and students. This is a truly rewarding experience.”

“Although it is a non-profit organization, I see a lot of potential for it to grow into an organization that can help solve problems for our communities with the passion and skills our people bring to the table.”

Kaniska Mandal Tech Lead, Search Science and Marketing Demand Optimization Team at Walmart Labs

Kaniska Mandal

“There is a massive demand for developing open source projects for mankind all over the world. AI For Mankind provides such a platform where knowledge-seekers, mentors, instructors and hackers can engage together for sharing knowledge and building apps for social goods.”

“I believe AI For Mankind has a great vision, proven execution strategy, long-term goals and unique combination of domain expertise and AI Experience.”

“As an active member I could make a direct impact by working on algorithms for detecting wild-fire. Now we have a bigger responsibility to help humanity containing the spread of Covid19.”

Matt Tso Neuroscience Post Doc, University of California, Berkeley

Matt Tso

“I joined AI For Mankind to sharpen my skills in AI and networking. And overall, I just love the idea to volunteer my skills for a good cause.”

“My amateur AI/data science projects include COVID19 cases and demographic analysis, wildfire image classification and predicting bad loans from Freddie Mac data”

Amit Doda Data Scientist, Adobe India

First Place Winner of Lets Stop Wildfires Hackathon

Amit Doda

“AI For Mankind is a great community with highly motivated and intellectual people working for the social good.”

“When I came across this hackathon - Early Wildfire Smoke Detection using Deep Learning skills, I was so tempted to participate as I could see a great opportunity to use my skills and take up a problem which is so real and meaningful to solve.”

“And there is nothing better than seeing your model deployed and tested on actual sites and seeing it help tackle a problem so big such as wildfires crisis. If that happens it would be doing my bit for the Environment.”

Anil Berry Lead Software Engineer, Adobe, India

Anil Berry

“My motivation for joining AI For Mankind is the collaboration, learning from each other, and to contribute in solving real world challenges using data science and machine learning.”


Davies Odu Software Developer, Microsoft

Davies Odu

“I joined AI for Mankind because I’m very excited about the economic and social advantages that AI and big data will bring to humanity how it might be leveraged with wisdom to improve the lives of ALL humans.”

“AI for Mankind brings developers and enthusiasts together with a strong vision to leverage AI for specific solutions that improve the human experience and this strongly motivates me to bring in my skills and learn from like minds.”

Aarnav Sawant, High school freshman at Bellarmine College Preparatory

Aarnav Sawant

“The world is definitely changing first with Wildfires and now with COVID-19. AI For Mankind has done exceedingly great work to help find solutions to these real-world problems, and I hope to contribute to this cause and help make this world a better place. I have most recently been working on a Deep Learning project to diagnose COVID-19 using Chest X-Ray Images.”

You can learn more about our awesome volunteers here.

Volunteer Your Skills

AI For Mankind is looking for tech savvy developers to volunteer their skills. If you are web developer, mobile developer, UI/UX, data scientist/AI experts etc, please volunteer your skills and fill out this form.

Become a Mentor

Join to become one of our mentors to provide guidance and expertise to help our volunteers.

Our Sponsors

Insight Fellows Programs labelbox.com

Become Our Sponsors

Reach out to us if you are interested in becoming our sponsors.

Your tax-deductible donation today will help support our mission.

AI For Mankind is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN 84-1750651