Anthropic has decided to invest in the healthcare and education sector to promote AI-powered advanced features and technical support.
Artificial intelligence AI startup Anthropic and the Gates Foundation have pledged $200 million to support artificial intelligence-related public goods and sectors including health and education, they said on Thursday.
Support of Anthropic’s technical staff and usage credits for its cloud AI will make up half of its financial commitment, while Bill Gates’ co-founder the Gates Foundation will provide grant funding, program design and expertise.
The commitment will last for four years and this news follows a $50 million agreement that the Gates Foundation and OpenAI announced in January to support 1,000 African clinics and communities with AI by 2028.
Against the backdrop of fears that AI could displace jobs and increase inequality, the new partnership is hoping to ensure that the technology benefits more people.
One area of focus is language access.
Janet Zhou, director of the Gates Foundation, said AI systems have performed poorly at writing and translating dozens of African languages, so Anthropic and the foundation want to support better data collection and labeling, which will be released publicly to help improve models across the industry.
Another area under consideration, Zhou said, is the release of so-called knowledge graphs that could help AI systems better meet the needs of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa and India.
The focus on public goods “came from the needs of various stakeholders and governments, including some fears that they might have proprietary lock-in and sovereignty,” Zhou said.
One initiative will prepare research centers to use the cloud to predict drug candidates for treating HPV and preeclampsia, which are less commercially attractive diseases for pharmaceutical companies, said Zhou and Anthropic’s Elizabeth Kelly.
Anthropic, a startup backed by Google and Amazon.com whose value has soared due to demand for its AI and coding tools, is working to fulfill what Kelly described as its founding mission to benefit humanity.
“This announcement is really important to who we are as a company,” said Kelly, who leads Anthropic’s profitable deployment team.
