It’s tempting to dismiss artificial intelligence as merely the latest fad, the flavor of the year, the revolution that’s merely evolution. After all, VR is still fringe, the so-called metaverse has fizzled and the blockchain is still a solution largely looking for a real-world problem.
But AI, machine learning and deep learning are genuinely monumental advancements. Both the biggest fans and biggest detractors of the tech agree on that. Whether AI will eliminate work or eliminate jobs, whether it will save lives or endanger all of humanity, our next era has arrived.
All because a switch was flipped on Nov. 30, 2022, that let anyone in the world start experimenting with “generative AI.” What initially seemed to merely be autocomplete (or Mad Libs) on steroids ended up shaking every industry to its core.
Even mine, as my crypto media gig at Decrypt became an AI and emerging tech gig in May. It immediately became a major pillar of our organization.
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt being seeded in education. Students “cheating” with AI means essays and theses are no longer sufficient to evaluate mastery of a subject. And overreliance on the nascent tech has created some “hallucinations” cited as fact that would make any history or math teacher faint.
Instead of scrambling to draft another policy or rulebook, or trying to keep the next generation in the dark, forward-looking schools and organizations are putting students and AI together to see what good things can be created.
This past weekend, the nonprofit Purple Mai‘a Foundation hosted “Build4Good,” a community hackathon combining AI and social impact. In short, bringing together a diverse mix of people to harness AI to make the world — and Hawaii — a better place.
The vision was especially meaningful given that most large language models used in AI have blind spots for Indigenous and minority communities and cultures. Purple Mai‘a has always connected technology to Hawaiian values, and the power of AI could be a game-changer in preserving and advancing them.
More than a hundred people registered to participate, and over the weekend, teams quickly advanced from brainstorm to working prototypes that applied AI to challenges ranging from coral reef health to endemic species identification to houselessness and language preservation.
“We have kuleana to explore how to ethically use machine learning and AI to accelerate problem-solving in Hawaii, rooted in the values of aloha aina,” explained Keoni DeFranco, who heads the Purple Mai‘a entrepreneurial program. The cultural foundation guided teams to consider both utility and ethics in their designs.
From 25 ideas, six teams were formed, and while they built their AI prototypes, they heard from local startups already using AI in their work: Shifted Energy in renewable energy, and Hononu in ocean conservation.
The event also included a keynote by former Apple and Google engineer Ananda Cobb, a Maui resident now focused on AI ethics, and a presentation by New York-based social impact investor Alex Petrescu of a tool that can add Hawaiian diacritical marks — kahako and okina — to older written texts and translate them into English.
On Sunday the teams presented their work.
The winning team, Ko‘a Kollective, was led by Annalee Herrera and included five female engineers. Inspired by Herrera’s coral planting work in Waianae, the team created a tool to assess coral reef health, developing an algorithm that can identify coral species and assign a health rating based on coral images. They will continue to develop their solution as part of the Purple Mai‘a incubator.
Image recognition was also the foundation of AinaQuest, an app that can identify Hawaii’s endemic plant species and could form the basis of augmented-reality nature tours.
Other teams included Hale Outreach, a conversational chatbot that people can call to get up-to-date resources on housing, and ‘Olelo.ai, a Hawaiian language text-to-speech tool to help with pronunciation and audio generation.
“The weekend was a big success, and we’re encouraged by how far along each team got in just a weekend,” DeFranco said. “Rooting our cause in culture and aloha aina is a critical piece of this puzzle.”
Purple Mai‘a says it will host more AI workshops in 2024, and I’m already tracking half a dozen AI events and conferences sprouting from or coming to Hawaii next year.
AI is everywhere. In disruption there is opportunity. And I think Hawaii will do quite well.
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Ryan Kawailani Ozawa publishes Hawaii Bulletin, an email newsletter covering local tech and innovation. Read and subscribe at HawaiiBulletin.com.
