At this year’s South by Southwest the theme for our conference tech coverage is “AI for good.” Technologists will be discussing how they are using new developments in artificial intelligence to solve complex, long-standing social problems, including crimes against children.

Federico Gomez Suarez (pictured), senior technical program manager at Microsoft, spoke to John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during SXSW about his involvement in Thorn, a special outfit that works with law enforcement to rescue traffic or exploited children. (*Disclosure below.)

“The fact that we’re making a difference in those lives is extremely encouraging,” Suarez said.

He credits Microsoft’s Hack for Good program for paving his avenue to Thorn. In fact, Microsoft encourages its employees to contribute their skills to nonprofits like Thorn, he stated.

Thorn does quite a bit of work with facial recognition in photos using artificial intelligence and deep learning. “You can go from having to look at hundreds of images and spending potentially hours to doing it in seconds,” he said. “Having the data sets, we need to go and train them, and that’s where using hardware and, particularly, using GPUs to actually do training really is key for us,” he said.

Honing AI tools for real-world results

Thorn has honed particular tools specifically for fighting crimes against children.

“We’re using existing deep learning modules and improving them with our particular scenario,” Suarez said.

One such tool is called Spotlight, which leverages massive amounts of data to assist law enforcement in improving the effectiveness of human trafficking investigations. “Through the use of this tool, last year about 2,000 children who were victims of trafficking were identified,” he said.

Thorn is always looking for volunteers to contribute their technology skills. Interested parties can visit Wearethorn.org for more info.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the South by SouthWest (SXSW). (*Disclosure: Intel sponsors some SXSW segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Intel nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE