GO CORONA!!! GO!!!

AI TOWARDS SOCIAL GOOD

BRIEF INTRO ABOUT 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Just as how humans learn, AI have to ‘learn’.

 Up to now, the AI learns by being told on what to learn, what to ignore. 

The humans can give the AI reference data from physical input sources like sensors or huge data base of a particular subject of interest. AI makes decision and takes action by basically comparing data with desired parameters set by the human instruction sets.

"Instructions! To do this and that"

Basically, we humans wanted the AI's main function is 

To be an unquestioning loyal slave.

The current AI have begun to predict Human actions. Even as simple as typing this article in Microsoft word. This rudimentary AI is predicting the spelling of words and grammar even before the word itself is completed by the human. All this has been taken for granted as a norm expected by each successive human generation.

In a situation where a medical based AI is analyzing the chances of survival between a mother and her unborn baby after a car accident. Would an AI decide to sacrifice an unborn child to save the mother? Humans would almost do otherwise. Such critical decisions have always been best left to the humans, but that is about to change.

AI's STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT IN HEALTH

CORONA VIRUS

The mysterious Coronavirus (COVID-19)

 is not an unknown subject anymore; with it spreading at an alarming rate, there have been over 8,62,495 infections 42,510 deaths that have been caught worldwide.

While every country is working hard in order to quell the virus through quarantines, lock-downs, travel limits and accelerated research, it seemed to have gone out of control.

However, the question of whether technologies like AI can help has arisen?

It is for sure that at the moment, Artificial intelligence is not going to stop the outbreak of the new virus or replace the role of the experts in it. 

Considering that AI is constantly being used in detection and diagnosis of the disease, below are 

9 ways

 how Artificial intelligence is currently being used to manage and fight COVID-19:

1.Drones to deliver medical supplies:

One of the safest and the fastest methods of delivering medical supplies during an outbreak is through drones.

 Terra Drone is currently using its unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver and transport medical supplies with little risk between Xinchang County’s disease Control Centre and the People’s Hospital.

2.To identify, track and forecast disease outbreaks:

BlueDot, a venture-backed startup has managed to build a sophisticated AI platform that processes billions of pieces of data to identify these outbreaks. This data can include the world’s air travel network, health reports, and many others. With respect to the case of the coronavirus, BlueDot made its first alert on December 31st, 2019. 

3.To process healthcare claims:

 With the virus spreading like a wildfire, not only are the clinical operations of healthcare systems taxed but also the business and administrative divisions of it. A blockchain platform offered by Ant Financial is assisting in speeding up the processing claims by reducing the number of face-to-face interactions between patients and hospital staff.

4.To help in the diagnosis of the virus:

 Incidentally, BlueDot is not the only organisation to have successfully leveraged AI in helping to curb the coronavirus. Alibaba (a Chinese tech company) said AI can detect Covid-19 in just 20 seconds! The company has said that with the help of AI in CT Scans, it can detect Coronavirus in just 20 seconds. The model has a precision rate of 96% and if doctors were to do the same, it would take up to 20 minutes. The algorithm was built by Alibaba’s research institute named Damo Academy. The AI model was trained with the help of data from more than 5,000 confirmed cases and can identify patients with the deadly virus in CT scans.

5.Chatbots to share information and spread awareness: 

AI-based Chatbots are an essential means of communication for people to access free online health consultation services, updates on the latest travel procedures and disruptions, and more.

6.Everyday Wear for Precaution and Protection:

 An Israeli startup, Sonovia aims at to arming healthcare systems with face masks made from their AI-based anti-pathogen, anti-bacterial fabric that relies on metal-oxide nanoparticles.
With fever being one of the symptoms of the virus, security staff at Hongyuan Park in eastern China’s Hangzhou city have been given AI-enabled glasses that can detect the body temperature of visitors. Developed by an Hangzhou-based startup, Rokid Corp, these glasses work along the concept of non-contact thermal augmented reality. Fitted with a camera and a cable, the regular-looking glasses detect anybody with a fever – immediately sending alerts and making digital records.

7.To assist in the development of drugs:

 Within weeks of the outbreak, AI’s predictive capabilities already began proposing existing drugs that might be useful in its cure. Google’s DeepMind division uses its latest AI algorithms to study and understand proteins that make up the virus and are publishing their findings to help in the development of treatments.

8.Identification of non-compliance or infected individuals:

 A team of physicians at the Zhongnan Hospital at Wuhan in China are now using a GPU-accelerated AI software model to detect visual signs of the COVID-19. The model relies on NVIDIA GPUs for both training as well as for inference, and it has managed to help overworked staff screen and prioritize patients that are likely to have the virus. Developed by a Beijing-based startup Infervision, the software detects signs of pneumonia caused by the virus. While the software was primarily used in the detection of cancer in lung CTs, the newly developed model looks more closely at coronavirus pneumonia. Till now the new system has been deployed in over 34 hospitals in China and has successfully reviewed more than 32,000 cases of the coronavirus or Covid 19.

9.Supercomputers to work on coronavirus vaccines: 

Supercomputers of various major tech companies like Tencent, DiDi, and Huawei are being used by researchers for the development of a cure or a vaccine for the virus. The speed these computers is much faster than the standard computer processing and hence can run faster calculations and provide model solutions for necessary situations.