AI-deas: using AI to tackle society's biggest challenges

AI for Cultural Heritage Hub (ArCH)

Cambridge’s GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) house millions of objects from across the globe, representing an unparalleled repository of cultural and natural history.

However, challenges such as analogue formats, handwritten records, fragmented objects, multilingual sources and complex surfaces make much of this data difficult to access. To address these challenges, the AI for Cultural Heritage Hub (ArCH) will create a secure workspace and empower non-technical users to analyse cultural heritage data securely with AI tools.

By encouraging collaboration among curators, researchers, IT professionals and AI experts, the new hub will prototype adaptive AI solutions to enhance understanding of collections and identify a selection of AI tools to address these problems.

Amelie Roper, Head of Research at Cambridge University Library and AI-deas lead, said: “The UK’s first AI for Cultural Heritage Hub will be both a community of practice and a prototype workspace. ArCH will enable heritage practitioners and collections researchers to harness the power of AI to unlock cultural heritage collections.”

This project is a collaboration between the Cambridge University Library, the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and the University's Collections-Connections-Communities Strategic Research Initiative.

Responsible AI for better lifelong brain and mental health

Brain diseases and mental health disorders are taking a toll on people throughout their lives. Dementia is the leading cause of death in England and Wales, and different mental health disorders lead to significant reductions in life expectancy. 

This project will use the latest advances in AI to better understand brain health and disease. It will explore the environmental, social and neurological factors at play, to develop responsible AI-driven tools that help clinicians predict, diagnose and treat brain diseases and mental health disorders. 

The project will be led by the Department of Psychology and delivered by an interdisciplinary team of experts in areas including data science, software engineering, neuroscience and clinical practice from across the university. 

Professor Zoe Kourtzi, AI-deas challenge lead, said: "AI-deas is a springboard for thinking outside the box about using AI to tackle real-world challenges like those associated with brain and mental health disorders. Brain and mental health disorders touch every family. Building robust and responsible AI tools has the potential to help clinicians diagnose early, improve patient wellbeing and outcomes and reduce misdiagnosis, making resources available to people that need them the most."

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.

The MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit will lead this project.

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."

AI for climate and nature

The twin climate and biodiversity crises are two of the world’s most complex challenges to tackle. This project aims to develop AI approaches for bringing together a wide range of datasets and accelerating the collation of information.

This work will provide up to date, relevant and robust information for researchers and decision-makers working on climate and biodiversity conservation – opening up the possibility for more targeted and effective solutions to some of our world’s most pressing climate and biodiversity challenges.

Anil Madhavapeddy, AI-deas challenge co-lead, said: “Mitigating the impacts of climate change while maintaining and restoring biodiversity demands urgent, evidence-based action. We're excited to bring together an interdisciplinary team across computer science, ecology, climate and conservation to use AI to empower decision-makers to equitably tackle the biggest challenge of our generation.”

This project is a collaboration between Cambridge Zero, Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Conservation Evidence, Institute for Computing for Climate Science, Conservation Research Institute, Centre for Landscape Regeneration, Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits and Cambridge Centre for Earth Observation.