The five winners of the challenge called AI-deas  have been selected by ai@cam: the University of Cambridge’s new flagship mission to drive AI innovation that benefits science, citizens and society. They will receive seed funding to get off the ground and support to scale their impact. Each project exemplifies the public value ai@cam champions in artificial intelligence research, by being interdisciplinary by design, grounded in real world need, and having a clear plan for cross-sectoral collaboration with external stakeholders – such as affected communities, public sector, industry and NGOs.

The five winners include a project led by Matt Davis, Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, which will develop new ways to support people with language and communication difficulties using AI:

Improving language equity and inclusion through AI

Using language to communicate is something many take for granted. However, a significant proportion of the UK population find spoken or written communication more difficult due to sensory, neural or linguistic challenges such as hearing loss, brain injury or language barriers, and can face substantial disadvantages in many aspects of their lives.

This project aims to develop new AI methods to understand and address these challenges to improve equity and inclusion. It will develop new ways to support people with language and communication difficulties. For example, with AI we can assess and diagnose common language and communication conditions at scale, and develop technologies such as intelligent hearing aids, real-time machine translation, or other language aids to support affected individuals at home, work or school.

Matt Davis, AI-deas challenge lead, said: “New AI technologies are changing our day-to-day lives: we speak rather than type text messages on our phones, and have conversations with Alexa or Siri. As these systems become more common they may reinforce the barriers faced by those who find communicating through language more difficult.

“Cambridge University hosts the UK’s largest community of researchers working on speech and language technology and have a remarkable breadth and depth of expertise in understanding the real-world impact of language challenges in education, health or work. This project brings these research communities together to develop new AI technologies to support people who find communicating using language a daily challenge in order to improve equity and inclusion.”

For the full University of Cambridge press release, and details of the other project winners, please click here: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/AI-deas-launch#section-WTk4zki1wU