An excerpt: Contributions of the Ki to the fight against the coronavirus

An excerpt: Contributions of the Ki to the fight against the coronavirus

New York, 14.4.2020

In his AI tech blog, copywriter Konrad Budek reports on how companies, governments and organisations are (or could be) using AI and analytics to fight the pandemic. These include image recognition to ensure people are wearing face masks and the detection of existing drugs that could stop the virus in its tracks. Budek points out that we can address the ethical problems of AI by making medical and personal data anonymous and limiting the solutions to fighting the corona virus.

Here are some examples that Budek has discovered:

◊ Creating intelligent dashboards. These AI-enabled interfaces can deliver crisp data in near real-time, including information on how medical devices are distributed or where there are confirmed and suspected cases. One example is the interactive and internet-based dashboard developed by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University: interactive and internet-based dashboard.

◊Unternehmen such as DarwinAI and Alibaba AI have developed systems that can automatically examine chest x-rays of patients for symptoms of COVID-19. This can help hospitals to diagnose patients more quickly, although there are some concerns about whether these systems are accurate and worth using.

◊ Handling documentation for doctors and teachers. The AI can track and analyse the work of teachers who now teach students from home. For doctors, it can send automated analyses of a patient’s medical data directly to their trays, eliminating the need for paper archives.

◊ Image recognition of masks. While we haven’t been able to find concrete examples of how this technology has been introduced, Budek cites an example of face recognition models that could detect whether someone is actually wearing a mask or not. One could install such technology in public areas and send out warnings if someone is not wearing a mask, he notes.

◊ Development and discovery of medicines. Scientists from companies like Gero have developed AI platforms that have identified existing drugs that could contain or even treat the coronavirus. Budek shares DeepMind’s AlphaFold ( DeepMind’s AlphaFold) which can predict protein structures and support drug discovery. Although clinical studies are still required, these AI models are often able to find out which drugs and molecules are good candidates much faster than humans.