Over the past year, rural farmers in Malawi have been seeking advice about their crops and animals from a generative AI chatbot. These farmers ask questions in Chichewa, their native tongue, and the app, Ulangizi, responds in kind, using conversational language based on information taken from the government’s agricultural manual. “In the past we could wait for days for agriculture extension workers to come and address whatever problems we had on our farms,” Maron Galeta, a Malawian farmer, told Bloomberg. “Just a touch of a button we have all the information we need.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The nonprofit behind the app, Opportunity International, hopes to bring similar AI-based solutions to other impoverished communities. In February, Opportunity ran an acceleration incubator for humanitarian workers across the world to pitch AI-based ideas and then develop them alongside mentors from institutions like Microsoft and Amazon. On October 30, Opportunity announced the three winners of this program: free-to-use apps that aim to help African farmers with crop and climate strategy, teachers with lesson planning, and school leaders with administration management. The winners will each receive about $150,000 in funding to pilot the apps in their communities, with the goal of reaching millions of people within two years.
Greg Nelson, the CTO of Opportunity, hopes that the program will show the power of AI to level playing fields for those who previously faced barriers to accessing knowledge and expertise. “Since the mobile phone, this is the biggest democratizing change that we have seen in our lifetime,” he says.
In early February, Opportunity employees from around the world participated in brainstorming sessions for the incubator, generating more than 200 ideas. Many of these employees hoped to wield generative AI’s potential to solve the specific problems of clients they had long worked with on the ground in high-poverty areas. For instance, verbal chatbots offering targeted advice and trained upon specific languages and vetted documents could be especially useful for communities with limited literacy. “Our clients are never going to use Google,” Nelson says. “Now, they can speak, and are spoken to, in their own language.”
Read More: AI’s Underwhelming Impact On the 2024 Elections.
The top 20 teams then worked to transform their ideas into app prototypes, with assistance from mentors at major tech companies and technical support from MIT platforms. The three winners, which do not yet have formal names, were then picked by a panel of judges. The first winner is a farming app that hopes to improve upon Ulangizi. While that app offers general knowledge, this one will be designed to take in personalized data and give specific farming advice—like what seeds to plant and when and how much fertilizer to use—based upon a farmer’s acreage, crop history, and climate.
Rebecca Nakacwa, who is based in Uganda and one of the project’s founders, says that the app’s ability to understand climate patterns in real time is crucial. “When we went to farmers, we thought the biggest problem was around pricing,” she says. “But we were so surprised, because they told us their topmost problem is climate: finding a solution to how to work with the different climate changes. We know that with AI, this is achievable.” She hopes to have the app ready for the start of planting season in Rwanda and Malawi next summer.
The second app helps teachers develop lesson plans tailored to their students. The app is led by Lordina Omanhene-Gyimah, who taught in a rural school in Ghana. She found that teachers faced an acute lack of resources and knowledge about how to cater to classrooms filled with students of different ages and learning styles. Her app allows teachers to input information about student’s learning styles, and then creates lesson plans based on the national school curriculum. Omanhene-Gyimah hopes to roll out the app in classrooms in Ghana and Uganda before the next academic school year.
The third app is designed to help school owners in areas from teacher recruitment to marketing to behavioral management. Anne Njine, a former Kenyan teacher, hopes that the app will be a “partner in the pocket for school leaders, to give them real time solutions and ideas.” Opportunity says that the app is ready to be rolled out to 20,000 schools, potentially reaching 6,000,000 students.
Read More: Meteorologists Are Using AI To Forecast Hurricanes.
The success of these apps is far from guaranteed. People in rural areas often lack smartphones or mobile connectivity. (An Opportunity rep says that the apps will be designed to work offline.) There are steep learning curves for new users of AI, and models sometimes return false answers, which can be problematic in educational settings. Nelson hopes that training these AIs on specific data sets and alongside clients will produce better, more accurate results.
Nelson’s goal is for the incubator program to launch three new AI-based apps a year. But that’s dependent on the funding of philanthropists and corporate partners. (Opportunity declined to say how much it has raised for the program so far.)
The founders of the three winning apps are confident that they have found transformative real-life use cases for an industry whose impact is often exaggerated by runaway hype. “It’s not just we like using AI because it’s in vogue and everybody’s doing it,” Omanhene-Gyimah says. “We are in the field. We work with these clients on a daily basis, and we know what they need.”
Every year for over two decades, TIME editors have highlighted the most impactful new products and ideas in TIME’s Best Inventions issue. To compile this year’s list, we solicited nominations from TIME’s editors and correspondents around the world, and through an online application process, paying special attention to growing fields—such as health care, AI, and green energy. We then evaluated each contender on a number of key factors, including originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.
The result is a list of 200 groundbreaking inventions (and 50 special mention inventions)—including the world’s largest computer chip, a humanoid robot joining the workforce, and a bioluminescent houseplant—that are changing how we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible.
Read the full list here.
Getting lash extensions can be an uncomfortable process, involving lying with tape under your eyes on a bed for two hours. Chief technology officer Nathan Harding co-founded Luum Lash when he realized it could be improved by using robots. Luum swaps sharp application instruments for soft-tipped plastic tools, uses a safety mechanism to detach instruments from the machine before they poke a client, and employs machine learning to apply lashes more efficiently and precisely. An appointment that usually takes two to three hours takes one and a half with Luum. Luum lash artists, primarily working from the Lash Lab in Oakland, Calif., can see “up to four times the clients” daily as they could operate without the robot, says CEO Jo Lawson. So far, Luum has applied more than 160,000 eyelash extensions, charging $170 for a full set. Luum has secured 51 patents in 25 countries and plans to launch at Nordstrom’s Westfield Valley Fair Store in California in November.
Learn More at Luum Precision Lash
NuFace’s facial toning devices have been gaining popularity in recent years, but the latest model, the Trinity+ Complete, offers the combination of microcurrent and red light therapy, a hugely popular and study-backed skincare treatment. The handheld facial device has three magnetized attachments that promise to tighten facial muscles and smooth wrinkles. “As we get older, we need to exercise more to keep our bodies toned and tight,” says NuFace co-founder and CEO Tera Peterson. “The same concept goes for delicate facial muscles.” Thirty-six concentrated red LED lights are designed to smooth skin, while two attachments for administering microcurrents (one for targeting around the eyes) use up to 425 microamps to increase cellular adenosine triphosphate, providing a nearly instant, at-home facelift. The device prioritizes safety by shutting off after 20 minutes.
“If you cut yourself, what’s the first responder?” says Rion Aesthetics CEO Alisa Lask. “Platelets—your blood.” Going off that premise, creators of Rion’s Plated Intense Serum purchase platelets from a blood bank to harness the type of exosome—an inter-cellular messenger—responsible for signaling cell renewal. With billions of exosomes per two-pump dose, Plated uses its Renewosome technology to decrease facial redness and maintain shelf stability of the serum—a challenge for stem cell-containing products. The company has the medical credentials: Rion was founded by Mayo Clinic physicians at the Van Cleve Cardiac Regenerative Medicine Program, where they discovered that exosomes play a key role in healing. The company now produces platelet-derived exosome products currently in clinical trials for wound healing, cardiology, and orthopedics, while Lask’s spinoff focuses on aesthetic applications. A 2023 clinical study found that “all patients experienced improvement in redness, skin irritation, skin tone, texture, and smoothness” with nine weeks of Plated use.
Buy Now: INTENSE Serum on Plated SkinScience
Keratin has been part of hair care routines since Brazilians popularized use of the smoothing protein. But the time-consuming treatment process is a short-term solution. “We created Virtue’s Damage Reverse Serum to actually reverse and prevent future damage as opposed to just patching it up temporarily,” says Virtue Labs CEO Jose Luis Palacios. The lightweight cream-to-serum formula contains the company’s proprietary protein, Alpha Keratin 60ku, which it claims has been shown to re-seal hair’s split ends. An independent study conducted by TRI Princeton found the serum sealed 98% of split ends after one use.
Buy Now: Virtue Damage Reverse Serum on Virtue Labs | Amazon | Sephora | Dermstore
Around 22 million Americans are exposed to loud noises during the workday. Ear protectors help, but block out conversations, too. To address that issue, 3M has developed the world’s first self-charging protective communications headset, the Peltor WS Alert XPV Headset. The headset blocks outside noise but includes headphones and a microphone so workers can hear each other via Bluetooth, and it never runs out of power. Using a patented solar cell technology called Powerfoyle, it “converts outdoor and indoor light into clean, continuous energy” to charge a lithium-ion battery, says Chris Goralski, group president of 3M’s safety and industrial business group. 3M reports it sold $1 million of the headsets in their first month on the market.
Buy Now: 3M Peltor WS Alert XPV Headset on Conrad
Imagine a conference room with a dozen people, plus more joining remotely on a video call. It’s awkward. Eye contact is tough and if you’re on video, it’s hard to see everyone clearly. Logitech Sight combines a tabletop device with a multi-camera system and AI to automatically snap the focus onto whoever’s speaking (and center them in-frame), creating a more natural conversation for video conferences on a range of platforms. Up to four speakers can be shown in split-screen, which looks like a slick TV news production—and that was precisely the inspiration. Logitech’s VP of Product, Henry Levak, calls the solution “a little bit of Hollywood and a little bit of Silicon Valley.”
Buy Now: Logitech Sight on Logitech | Amazon | B&H Photo Video
Want to discuss A Room with a View with Lena Dunham? Or hear Roxane Gay talking through Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence? Now you can, thanks to publishing outfit Rebind. The company was founded by John Dubuque, who hired a professor at Corpus Christi College, at the University of Oxford, to teach him the philosophical tome Being and Time. With Rebind, AI provides expert conversational commentary about a book in response to user questions. So far, 10 books are available to the 1,000 users in the open beta, with two more books added each month, once the 10,000-strong waitlist opens. “The goal is to make this encounter with deeply meaningful texts possible for many more people,” says Dubuque.
Learn More at Rebind
Worldwide, 2.6 billion people don’t have an internet connection. The mission of Taara, which sits within X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory, is to bridge that gap. Taara uses beams of light to transmit data between small terminals, offering an alternative to traditional fiber optic cables in places where installing ground-based systems is tricky. The beams can reach over 20 kilometers, delivering speeds up to 20 gigabits per second. The tech has been installed in 13 countries, including India, Kenya, Fiji, and even the U.S. (in rural areas and at events like Coachella). Most recently, in Ghana, 20,000 new users and 320 businesses have come online thanks to Taara. “Think of it like fiber, but without having to run any fiber—it’s just over the air,” says Mahesh Krishnaswamy, general manager of the project.
Learn More at X Taara
Bimotal Elevate turns a pedal bike into an e-bike with just a cellphone-sized device. Toby Ricco developed the product so he could keep mountain biking after he recovered from tearing cartilage in his left knee. Elevate is a $1,995 palm-sized motor with 750 watts of power—enough to produce 75 Newton-meters of torque—that clips onto the wheel of a regular bike. While still in its infancy—around 100 of Elevate’s 400 pre-ordered units have shipped since March—Ricco has big plans for the product. “Our beachhead market is electrifying bikes,” he says, but search and rescue teams are also using it to motorize gurneys to tackle tough terrain.
Buy Now: Elevate Ebike Motor System at Bimotal
Traditionally, slacklining is for daredevils: You try to balance yourself on what looks like a not-so-tight tightrope, often slung between trees. The problem, of course, is that you can fall. So the Germany-based Gibbon created a super short and low slackline, attaching just over three feet of webbing to a wooden board. The wood’s natural springiness gives the line its “slack,” and the line itself is only three inches from the ground, which allows for low-risk balance training. “It’s great for focusing,” says Robert Kaeding, CEO and founder of Gibbon. It also allows for tricks, which were on display at the first-ever GiBoard Cup championship, in Stuttgart, earlier this year.
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