First Year Results from the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE: Lessons for the “AI for Good” Movement

Abstract

The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE is a four-year competition awarding a $5 million prize purse to teams improving the world with artificial intelligence. The competition began in 2017 with 148 teams competing to solve problems in sustainability, robotics, artificial general intelligence, healthcare, education, and a variety of other grand challenge problem domains. The first round of judgment narrowed the field to 59 teams. The characteristics of the advancing and rejected problem domains highlight the opportunities and challenges of “AI for Good” as a social and technological movement. This work surveys the problem domains and technologies of teams, details the prize judging process executed to date, and explores several case studies from the first year of the competition. The results indicate where AI researchers may direct their efforts to address problems that are simultaneously important for humanity, technically challenging, and feasible to solve within the competition timeline.