The University of Southern California Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (USC CAIS) is a joint venture between the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and the Viterbi School of Engineering. Our mission is to conduct research in Artificial Intelligence to help solve the most difficult social problems facing our world. When we consider what problems to tackle, we focus our efforts on low resource communities both here in the United States and globally. We draw inspiration from the Grand Challenges of Social Work, the Grand Challenges of Engineering, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Together, they outline a set of goals which if attained would greatly benefit the wellbeing of countless persons across the world. Simultaneously, these set of goals provide important new directions for AI and social science research. Based on these goals, our initial projects focus on ending homelessness, fighting substance abuse, preventing suicide, improving access to health care, social responses to global climate change, reducing gang violence, and protecting wildlife.