Client story
Client: XPRIZE | Industry: AI assurance
Applying AI assurance to support rainforest biodiversity for XPRIZE
XPRIZE is a global leader in staging large scale contests to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. CC experts in artificial intelligence teamed up with the organisation to help validate and assess the AI solutions for its XPRIZE Rainforest initiative, sponsored by Alana, a five-year, $10 million competition aimed at revealing near real-time insights about the health and wellbeing of rainforests. The ultimate ambition is to rapidly produce biodiversity data and insights to inform conservation action and policy, support sustainable bio economies and empower indigenous people and communities.
Our initial relationship with XPRIZE was founded on mutual respect and something of a meeting of minds. The organisation was seeking a partner aligned to its mission of empowering people to achieve breakthroughs that accelerate an abundant and equitable future for all. With our commitment to Tech for Good projects and a proactive focus on biodiversity as a sustainability challenge, the fit was a good one.
We were able to deliver expertise in AI system development that was infused with a deep understanding of AI assurance. Our practical approach to AI assurance, also known as trustworthy AI, is built on a robust structure and helps clients ensure their innovations are safe and secure – and also designed to meet future regulatory and standards compliance. In this case, we developed an assessment framework tailored to the specific needs of the XPRIZE Rainforest initiative, and which were focused on robustness, reliability, scalability and innovation.
Rainforest biodiversity
The XPRIZE Rainforest competition is part of the US-based organisation’s biodiversity and conservation domain, which is focused on accelerating development of novel technologies to rapidly and comprehensively survey biodiversity and improve understanding of complex ecosystems.
Competing teams from across the world were challenged to survey the biodiversity contained in 100 hectares of tropical rainforest in 24 hours. They also had to produce the most impactful real-time insights within 48 hours. Semifinal testing in Singapore concluded in Spring 2023, with six teams progressing to finals testing which took place in the Amazon rainforest in July 2024.
“The work was vital for informing the judges and enabling a successful judging summit. Well done to the CC team for all the perseverance and hard work in this first of a kind – the evaluation of AI systems for conservation technology.”
Competitors used a wide range of technologies for their endeavours, including everything from cameras and drones to bioacoustics and eDNA – that is DNA collected from environmental samples such as soil and water. Crucially, all applied AI in some way – at a layer above the various sensing technologies – to rapidly process data.
With limited artificial intelligence expertise represented on the judging panel, our knowledge in AI assurance was indispensable in guiding fair judgement of what was a set of vastly differing AI systems and highly complex environments and scenarios.
The first phase of our project involved getting up to speed both with the detail of each team’s solution, and the priorities and expectations of XPRIZE and its judging panel. This enabled us to devise a set of criteria on which the AI systems could be fairly assessed.
Measuring biodiversity
In phase two, once the teams had collected and analysed their data, CC’s innovation consultants carried out those assessments, through a mixture of carefully defined qualitive and quantitative measures. Our report supported the final judging summit, which led to the selection and announcement of winning teams in November 2024.
With the sponsored prize pot adding up to $10 million, the winners have been given a great chance to scale their systems and develop impactful real-world solutions for measuring the biodiversity of tropical rainforests. It was essential for us to ensure that the judges received a comprehensive AI assessment, enabling them to make informed decisions when selecting the winning teams based on robustness, scalability, reliability, and true innovation.
XPRIZE Rainforest – check out the competition winners
FIRST PLACE
Limelight Rainforest
United States
SECOND PLACE
Map of Life Rapid Assessments
United States
THIRD PLACE
Brazilian Team
Brazil
BONUS PRIZE
Eth Biodivx
Switzerland
The importance of saving the world’s remaining rainforests can’t be overstated. They are nature’s life support system, home to a huge proportion of biodiversity and influencing our weather systems. By helping to ensure that the XPRIZE Rainforest competition was won by teams who were using AI responsibly to achieve the ultimate goal of measuring the most amount of biodiversity and providing the most meaningful insights, we were actively working to expediate the monitoring and protection of this vital ecosystem.
“XPRIZE Rainforest will revolutionise our understanding of the planet’s most diverse and complex ecosystems, rapidly and remotely quantifying their intrinsic value in unprecedented detail. We are grateful to CC for their unique AI expertise, and commitment to our cause.”
Environmental sustainability
The project is one we look back on with huge pride. The ambitions of XPRIZE sit perfectly with CC’s bold approach to deep tech strategy – not least because the organisation exists to facilitate innovations that are so close to impossible that they wouldn’t otherwise happen. The stakes in environmental sustainability are high, and many of the solutions that are needed simply don’t exist. Perhaps this is why the conservation sector is increasingly looking for answers through radical technology innovation.
This is partly due to the pressing urgency of the situation, and partly down to the failure of more traditional approaches. Whatever the background, there’s no doubt that technology innovation, founded on AI assurance and trustworthy AI, will continue to fuel our collective fight to save the planet. CC will remain in the vanguard, ready to take inspiration from clients like XPRIZE and its ambition to “revolutionise how we work together to protect the planet’s most diverse and complex ecosystems in a time that has never been more urgent for life on earth”.
