AI Could Help With Distribution of Food to Food Banks

The problem of food insecurity may have another ally - Artificial Intelligence. 

Professor Alex Psomas/Purdue University- Computer Science: “So in these problems, these are matching problems, you're trying to match a donor with a recipient, right? So there's many things you can think of this way.”

Once the issue of efficiency is solved then the problem of fairness in distribution comes into play. AI could also assist in making sure food is used and not wasted due to logistical constraints. 

Professor Alex Psomas/Purdue University- Computer Science: “The current system is a person is making these matching decisions, and we just want to automate it. And in doing so, we want to ensure that, you know, of course, we're doing the right decisions, like in the sense of like, people are not driving a lot, you know, the food is going to people who want the food and can use the food, but also at the same time, we are being fair.”

 The technology could further be employed to make connections between the locations and amounts of surplus food by helping choose where that food is needed the most. 

Professor Alex Psomas/Purdue University- Computer Science: “The other thing is, now you can scale. Now, you can just like, you know, go beyond Indiana, you can even you know, include more food banks, you can, you know, include process donations a lot faster, because human doesn't have to sit around trying to call people on the phone and so on.”

For Market to Market, I’m David Miller.