Using AI to transform the lives of the blind

Phone apps make everyone’s lives easier, but for members of the blind community, a new seeing AI app transforms how they live and work every day. Anirudh Koul believes that any disability is merely a gap between what we want to do and what we can do, and it’s technology’s role to fill those gaps. Koul points out that we all experience gaps as we age, and his invention gives all hope for a more empowered future. Growing up in India, Anirudh Kuhl was programming computers at a young age and by high school he was captivated by patterns in data—a key component of artificial intelligence. He moved to the United States to study at Carnegie Mellon and after stints at Yahoo and Microsoft, is now an AI researcher with multiple patents. Driven by his desire to help a dear family member, he took on a hackathon challenge at Microsoft and led development of an app that is now helping hundreds of millions of people with disabilities. It literally puts the gift of sight in their hands. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.