From Nature
The vest that can hear your heartbeat
Benjamin Thompson & Shamini Bundell
A fabric microphone that can pick up human speech, and how AI helped the government of Togo distribute financial aid.
In this episode...
11:31 How AI helped Togo target financial aid
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Togo needed to distribute financial aid to the citizens most in need of assistance. It would have been impossible to run a nationwide survey to find out people’s financial situations, so they turned to machine learning to discover how best to distribute aid.
Joshua Blumenstock is an associate professor of information and co-director of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at UC Berkeley. The research discussed in this episode was published in Nature with Ph.D. student Emily Aiken on March 16, 2022.
