In late December last year, Dr. Li Wenliang began warning officials about a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, but was silenced by the police before tragically succumbing to the disease two months later. Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, a computer server halfway across the world started issuing worrying alerts of a potential new outbreak. The server runs software by BlueDot, a company based in San Francisco that uses AI to monitor infectious disease outbreaks for signs of early trouble.
Not enough people listened to either human expertise or AI. Then cases skyrocketed in Wuhan and spread across the world, and people had to take note.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it is remarkable that BlueDot and other machine learning-based services are beginning to catch early signs of infectious disease outbreaks—almost within the same time frame as health experts, if just for COVID-19. We often hear about AI as the next second coming of healthcare, where it can catch cases early, accelerate drug development, and personalize treatment. Yet COVID-19 is the first global pandemic to ever hold healthcare AI’s feet to the flame in a global, serious, and urgent real-world test case. In a head-to-head race, can AI actually accelerate new anti-virals or vaccines for COVID-19, something the world has never previously seen? Or will traditional biotech measures excel, in turn unveiling that AI’s hype massively outstrips reality?
MIT Technology Review recently reported an excellent piece that comprehensively looks at how AI—at its current ability level—can help us predict, diagnose, and treat novel viral threats. I’m on board with the general idea: AI’s potential is enormous.
Yet for now, don’t look to AI to help tackle COVID-19; it’s simply not ready.
That said, it is enormously helpful to see how major machine learning companies are utilizing or repositioning their technologies for tackling the crisis. People often critique AI tested in “toy cases,” or standardized, limited datasets that may have limited significance in the real world. With companies working on COVID-19, that’s no longer the case…
Image Credit: Envato/ Amanda Scott
News This Week
Coronavirus research updates: Positive coronavirus test is no guarantee of infectiousness
Nature wades through the literature on the new coronavirus — and summarizes key papers as they appear: 1 June — Positive coronavirus test is no guarantee of infectiousness People with COVID-19 are unlikely to [...]
Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything
In April, blood clots emerged as one of the many mysterious symptoms attributed to Covid-19, a disease that had initially been thought to largely affect the lungs in the form of pneumonia. Quickly after came [...]
Researchers develop experimental rapid COVID-19 test using nanoparticle technique
Scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) developed an experimental diagnostic test for COVID-19 that can visually detect the presence of the virus in 10 minutes. It uses a simple assay [...]
Researchers flag similarities between COVID-19 deaths and severe rheumatic illnesses
Rheumatologists at the University of Alberta are flagging similarities between the deaths of some COVID-19 patients and those with rheumatic illnesses, and are testing proven rheumatic treatments to see whether they help against [...]
Next-gen nano technologies to tackle infection and diagnose disease
Next-gen nano technologies that can prevent infection and diagnose disease are set to transform the medical industry as this important UniSA research is awarded more than $2 million dollars under the National Health and [...]
DeepMind’s Protein Folding AI Is Going After Coronavirus
In late December last year, Dr. Li Wenliang began warning officials about a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, but was silenced by the police before tragically succumbing to the disease two months later. Meanwhile, [...]
COVID-19 is like three different diseases, says New York doctor
Almost 10 weeks into the pandemic, COVID-19 is continuing to surprise and baffle health experts. In fact, experts' picture of exactly how COVID-19 might play out in the body is now quite different to [...]
Designing vaccines from artificial proteins
EPFL scientists have developed a new computational approach to create artificial proteins, which showed promising results in vivo as functional vaccines. This approach opens the possibility to engineer safer and more effective vaccines. Vaccines [...]
Tiny RNA that should attack coronavirus diminish with age and disease
A group of tiny RNA that should attack the virus causing COVID-19 when it tries to infect the body are diminished with age and chronic health problems, a decrease that likely helps explain why [...]
COVID-19 Coronavirus blood-clot mystery intensifies
Purple rashes, swollen legs, clogged catheters and sudden death — blood clots, large and small, are a frequent complication of COVID-19, and researchers are just beginning to untangle why. For weeks, reports have poured [...]
Coronavirus vaccine trials are underway around the world. China’s hoping it can be first for ‘redemption’
In a medical centre in the eastern city of Xuzhou, a few dozen healthy adults have become some of the first to trial a vaccine candidate for the coronavirus. They are among a small [...]
Epitopes.world taps AI to predict COVID-19 vaccine success
A team of researchers hailing from Harvard and Université de Montréal today launched Epitopes.world, an AI-powered, interactive platform designed to facilitate COVID-19 vaccine development. It’s built atop an algorithm — CAMAP — that generates predictions for potential [...]
Publication of our paper “Human Brain/Cloud Interface” in Frontiers Neuroscience Ebook
The "Human Brain/Cloud Interface" paper had more views that 99% of Frontiers articles. It has now been added to Frontier's "Nanotechnologies in Neuroscience and Neuroengineering" ebook which is available for download. Contributors: Frank J. [...]
The scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19 by Bill Gates
This is the full-length version of this post. You can read the condensed version, which appeared as an opinion article in the Washington Post, here. The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus. The [...]
New nanophotonic saliva/nasal swab test to instantly detect coronavirus with lasers
European photonics scientists are developing an ultrasensitive laser sensor that detects coronavirus at the earliest point of infection from a saliva or nasal swab in minutes. Responding to the European Commission’s Express Calls to [...]
Why COVID-19 may attack the body differently than we think
Understanding how COVID-19 attacks the human body is essential to developing an effective treatment or vaccine to stop the global pandemic — but there's still so much we don't know about how it can kill us. As [...]
