DataRobot extends pro bono AI platform licenses to nonprofit and social good organisations

DataRobot today announced in a company press release that it’s extending pro bono cloud licenses of its enterprise AI platform to qualified nonprofit and social good organisations by 30 days to celebrate the anniversary of the launch of its AI for Good programme and aid in the fight against COVID-19.

By extending the pro bono cloud licenses of its enterprise AI platform, DataRobot aims to further democratise AI with the end goal of enabling more charitable organisations to solve critical global issues using AI.

Chandler McCann, Data Science Practice Lead at DataRobot explained why they’re extending the pro bono cloud licenses by saying: “We’ve seen the transformative power that AI can have on organisations’ efforts to better understand – and manage – critical global issues. Organisations need to take advantage of every tool at their disposal to efficiently and strategically tackle issues plaguing our society – issues that in many cases have arisen or been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. By offering our AI platform pro bono to qualified nonprofit and social good organisations, we intend to help more institutions swiftly achieve their goals and improve the lives of millions of people around the world.”

AI for Good programmes has become increasingly popular due to the eruption of COVID-19 with businesses, not for profits, governments, charities, and individuals uniting to join the fight against the virus.

As a result of the global pandemic companies have been rolling out new AI-driven and automation enabled capabilities while investors have been taking positions to support these initiatives with examples being Orbita raising $9m for healthcare conversational AI and Vida Health raising $25m to meet the increased demand for remote care during COVID-19.

The silver lining is that it’s showing us what AI is possible of doing for future health crises, the capabilities it can enable businesses and individuals with, and how it can help the world going forward with DataRobots AI for Good programme providing case study examples.

“NGOs and nonprofits have had bold visions of change for years. Now more than ever, we must band together to move those missions forward for society. AI can play a significant role in that effort, and if you have a mission to improve our world, we want to be by your side, accelerating that with AI.” added McCann.

This update follows the recent announcement from DataRobot that it released new AI features to its platform which included a Use Case Value Tracker, Location AI, Champion/Challenger Models and Humble AI for MLOps, and Anomaly Detection for Time Series.

DataRobot launched the programme last July to help nonprofit and social good organisations accelerate their efforts to solve the world’s most pressing problems. Since the programme started, it has helped participating organisations create over 1,200 projects and build over 70,000 different projects.

The pro bono licenses given to nonprofit and social good organisations allow them to use the DataRobot platform that can support data scientists, field engineers, and AI success managers by enabling them to better understand and address critical issues such as water quality and access, patient care needs, and educational funding and resource requirements.

Michael S. Beattie, PhD, Director of Research at Brain and Spinal Injury Center, UCSF (BASIC UCSF) commented on how DataRobots programme has helped them by saying: “Thanks to the generosity of the DataRobot ‘AI for Good’ programme, we have been able to leverage the sophisticated AI tools to explore complex clinical data in our TRACK-SCI projects towards bridging research and clinical practice for spinal cord injury.”

DataRobot mentioned that their automated machine learning solution enables users to automate every step needed to build, deploy, and maintain powerful AI.

With DataRobot Paxata, self-service data preparation for enterprise AI tool on the platform, users can pull in data from the cloud and local desktop files to enable them to prepare that data in various ways to make it ready for machine learning. 

DataRobot explained that their AI for Good programme has already witnessed cases of success and claimed that more than 500 researchers have used the platform to leverage the power of AI to create models to help inform and prepare at-risk communities.

An example of one of these 500 researchers is Chile-based Angel Alberto Aponte, who used DataRobot to build a COVID-19 detection dashboard and explained how it helped by commenting: “This pandemic required me to work smarter and more effectively to deliver quick solutions. Using DataRobot I was able to create my COVID-19 detection dashboard in a matter of days.” 

Nonprofit and social good organisations interested in DataRobot’s AI for Good programme can apply on their website for free 30 day access to the platform starting today.