“There’s so much passion for using AI in ways that are beneficial,” Anna Bethke, Head of AI4 Social Good at Intel’s AI Products Group.  And she wanted to make it easier for others to get involved.

Bethke’s team partners with companies and social justice organizations to give them access to Intel’s knowledge of deep learning skills and techniques, making it easier for them to mine social media and other data to filter out the noise.

One of her first partnerships is with National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Their mission is to find children who are being trafficked or in danger of being kidnapped and alert the local law enforcement so they can take action. They get hundreds of thousands of alerts a day from social media like Facebook and Twitter, which was completely unmanageable.

There are three points of information NCMEC needs.  First, identify and prioritize which posts represent the most danger to the child.  Second, identify where the post is originating, which is often complicated by the use of multiple IP addresses and IP address obscuring.  Once the location is found, the legal jurisdiction needs to be identified so the information can be sent to the proper authorities (e.g., police or sheriff department).  But how do you find that information in the flood of data?