Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way we live, work, and solve problems. And in the same way that McIntire’s Commerce for the Common Good initiative applies business solutions to help unravel the most complex of society’s grand challenges, a competition in October 2024 asked students to use generative AI to solve societal issues with the developing technology.
The rules for concept submissions required a 500-word proposal that included a problem statement, how generative AI could address the specific issue discussed, a description of the AI approach, and its potential to produce positive results for society.
Faculty and student organizations shared the opportunity widely, and the first edition of the “Generative AI for the Common Good Concept Competition” produced 64 submissions from undergraduate and graduate student teams.
Commerce Professor Reza Mousavi, who was responsible for helping launch the concept competition, says that the students represented a wide range of disciplines and schools across Grounds, including McIntire, the College of Arts & Sciences, Darden, the School of Medicine (Biotechnology), the Batten School, and the School of Engineering.
“The entries showcased a rich blend of perspectives and ideas,” says Mousavi. “Overall, I was genuinely encouraged by the number of submissions we received, especially considering that this was our inaugural initiative, with less than a month of promotion. Regarding the quality of the proposals, I was pleasantly surprised. As I reviewed them, it became clear that our students have remarkable ideas for making our world a better place through generative AI.”
Sharing the Ideas
Three finalist groups were invited to Rouss & Robertson Halls on Oct. 30 to present their concepts to kick off McIntire’s “The Future of Commerce with Generative AI” event, an expert panel discussion on the latest AI breakthroughs and their game-changing impact on business. Mousavi says the three groups represented the most compelling submissions because they explored how the technology could contribute to solutions, rather than focusing on the technology itself.
The panel included Margo Bulka, Group VP of Strategy at digital tech consulting firm WillowTree; Zach Kass, former Head of Go-to-Market at OpenAI and current McIntire Executive-in-Residence; Barbara Rigatti, Public Sector Solutions Support for the Commonwealth of Virginia at Google Cloud; and Virginia Sharma (McIntire ’99), Head of Brand and Product Marketing at Google Public Sector.
The three student teams gave five-minute pitches to the panel: Accelerating Asylum (Class of ’28 students Pierce Brookins, Nelson Lattimer, and Nathan Wang); ASE Solutions (Class of ’28 students Alessio Azimipour, Savas Emanuel, and Euan Morgan); and Wikipedia Racers (McIntire Class of ’26 students Michael Kish, Jake Rashap, and Larina Yu).
Accelerating Asylum presented “A Generative AI Solution for Migrants and Border Patrol,” ASE Solutions offered their “AI Welfare Distribution Assistant,” while the Wikipedia Racers team demonstrated their concept, “Generative AI Augments Natural Disaster Relief Planning and Response.”
As the evaluations were tallied, panelists, faculty, and students in the audience provided immediate feedback to the student teams on their innovative ideas. Ultimately, Accelerating Asylum proved to be the winning team, and received a $1,500 prize for their innovative idea.
Inspired Thinking and Overcoming Issues
In deciding on the societal problem for their winning project, Wang, who is majoring in Computer Science, says that the lead-up to the recent presidential election and its focus on the urgent need to secure the border were drivers for where the team looked to innovate. “Through our research, we found that CBP agents were struggling to manage the high volume of asylum seekers, lacking the tools necessary to effectively handle the situation,” he says. “When I read OpenAI’s press release about their new Realtime API—which enables developers to create multilingual, speech-to-speech AI agents—it struck me that this technology could be pivotal in easing the strain on border agents.”
Kish of Wikipedia Racers says that his team reviewed all 17 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and their sub-targets, ideating ways that generative AI could be applied to them. “When we hit Target 11.5, which aims to reduce the damages caused by natural disasters, we felt that it was the right direction to go,” he says. “Hurricanes Helene and Milton were happening around the time we started thinking about this competition, so addressing natural disasters felt relevant.”
ASE Solutions’ Morgan, who plans to apply to the Comm School, says their initial idea stemmed from searching for scholarships: “Considering the different databases and resources available in that process, but more importantly the amount of money that goes unclaimed each year, we just had to consider how generative AI could be best applied.”
In moving past some of the most daunting roadblocks the group faced in drafting their AI idea, Lattimer from Accelerating Asylum says trying to brainstorm an efficient and ethical solution that wouldn’t cause a significant backlash to the complex question of immigration proved formidable. “We overcame this by doing extensive research on current practices and making sure our data was up to date,” says the Data Science and Computer Science double-major hopeful, “and even including the input of some other individuals who had experience with the problem.”
Comm and Computer Science double-major Rashap of Wikipedia Racers says that trying to strike a balance between feasibility and imagination with the group’s idea was most difficult: “As with any idea competition, we tried our best to be imaginative and understand what an ideal future would look like; however, we didn’t want to seem like we didn’t understand what could realistically be accomplished by generative AI in the near future.”
Emanuel of ASE Solutions agreed. “Trying to differentiate between what is currently possible and what we hope will be possible in the future [was the biggest issue.] AI is constantly shifting, as it’s been depicted as a magic wizard that can seemingly make any mundane or overcomplicated task doable, but there are still limitations to that,” says the pre-Comm student. “Finding out which limitations would be relevant to our problem didn’t stop us, but it was definitely a concern throughout our brainstorming process.”
Applying Coursework to the Competition
All of the finalist teams credit their UVA coursework for providing them with necessary knowledge to advance different aspects of their concepts.
“The skills I gained from Professor David Costanza’s Foundations of Commerce class were integral to my presentation,” says Brookins. “COMM 1800 gave me a foundational understanding of marketing, enabling me to effectively showcase the value our solution offered.”
Kish says that, while the McIntire team acknowledges what they learned throughout their time in the Comm School, the coursework from Systems with Professor Chris Maurer and Communications with Professor Kiera Allison stands out. “The systems-thinking, consumer-focused mindset we learned in Systems helped us develop a cohesive idea targeting the greatest needs we identified, while our Communication work with delivery techniques and slide design helped us convey our ideas to judges.”
Azimipour believes that his First Writing Requirement course was essential in streamlining his group’s entry to meet the word count parameters. “I also used some ideas from Foundations of Commerce in terms of the approach to writing as well as some of the background information on the topic of welfare,” he says.
All of the student participants seemed to genuinely enjoy the experience of creating a concept and presenting it. Wang was encouraged by the feedback and questions from the audience. Kish, Rashap, and Yu were happy to work together as friends who had the chance to follow their passions, while Emanuel admits that, though he wasn’t expecting to make it to the presentation round since the group decided to join the competition spontaneously, he was particularly pleased with the results.
As the winning team, Accelerating Asylum will receive mentorship from WillowTree or Capital One to further develop their generative AI solution. Kish says that Mousavi has offered to put his group in touch with an expert mentor; Azimipour notes that his team will keep working on their idea for a potential extension of the competition in the future, as well as present at WillowTree in the coming months.
For Mousavi, the competition demonstrated McIntire’s pursuit of Commerce for the Common Good and the innovative spirit of our students. “It also aligned perfectly with our mission to leverage commerce and technology for positive societal impact,” he says. “Seeing our students apply cutting-edge technology to real-world challenges reaffirms our commitment to educating future leaders who are equipped to make meaningful contributions to society.”
