Indian American Develops AI Tool To Tackle Cyber Bullying

The Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS), founded in 1942, is America’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.

Impressively, year after year, Indian students continue to make their presence felt at the talent search. This year 9 of the 40 finalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search are of Indian-origin. The Top Scholars or the 40 finalists receive a minimum award of $25,000.

Arjun Neervannan, a senior from University High School, California, was selected as one of the Regeneron STS Top 40. He will attend the prestigious Jerome Fisher Management and Technology (M&T) Program at the University of Pennsylvania & Wharton School of Business in fall 2020.

Arjun's Project is about cyberbullying and toxic language. According to him, it is a worldwide problem and it affects millions of teenagers and children, especially immigrants, many of whom are subjected to racist or culturally insensitive comments made online.

Citing his example, he shared, "Facing these hurtful comments myself online and in real life, I wanted to change that by developing a tool that would alert, inform and educate the kids about cyberbullying and toxic language. With AI (Artificial Intelligence), I thought it was best suited to address the challenging problem of understanding language context and provide more reliable and accurate models.”

“Having built the tool for the county, and state science fair competitions, I applied to the Regeneron Science Talent Search to use it as a platform to raise awareness about this cyberbullying problem and the solution that I’ve come up with.” He added

"I believe that the solution to cyberbullying and many such social problems we see online can be found by applying smarter AI research. I hope my approach can be one way for online forums to curb toxic comments without curbing free speech."

"Being selected as one of the top 40 finalists is a major boost to my confidence and a validation of my pursuit to solve social challenges by using the latest scientific research methods," Arjun said.

“Some of the most groundbreaking discoveries that have come about have resulted from a person’s burning curiosity to think out of the box and to explore and experience the unknown,” he further added.