How Covid-19 has helped drive AI

Introduction

It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent

computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human
intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically
observable1.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term used to describe machines performing human-like

cognitive processes such as learning, understanding, reasoning, and interacting. It can take
many forms, including technical infrastructure (i.e., algorithms), a part of a (production)
process, or an end-user product. AI looks increasingly likely to deeply transform how modern
societies live and work. Already today, smartphone smart assistants, such as Siri, perform a
variety of tasks for users; furthermore, all Tesla cars are connected and things that any one of
them learns are shared across the entire fleet. AI also matches prices and cars when one
orders an Uber ride, and curates what social media offer to a user based on their past
behavior. With the rise of AI comes the important question of how much it will affect
businesses, consumers, and the economy in more general terms. Employees are increasingly
interested in knowing what AI means for their job and income, while businesses are also keen
to find ways in which they can capitalize on the opportunities presented by this powerful
phenomenon.

As the globe grapples with COVID-19, every ounce of technical innovation and creativity
deployed to combat the epidemic moves us closer to eradicating it. In order to better
comprehend and handle the COVID-19 situation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning are being used. Machine learning allows computers to imitate human intellect and
consume enormous amounts of data in order to swiftly spot patterns and insights.

1 John McCarthy (2004). What is Artificial Intelligence?

https://borghese.di.unimi.it/Teaching/AdvancedIntelligentSystems/Old/IntelligentSystems_2008_2009/Old/
IntelligentSystems_2005_2006/Documents/Symbolic/04_McCarthy_whatisai.pdf
Statistics of AI during covid-19

According to studies, the crisis has boosted the adoption of analytics and AI, and this trend
will continue into the 2020s. According to a PwC survey, the Covid problem has expedited
52 percent of firms' AI deployment plans. Almost everyone, 86 percent, believes AI will be a
"mainstream technology" in their organisation by 2021. According to Harris Poll, which
partnered with Appen, 55 percent of organisations said they increased their AI strategy in
2020 as a result of Covid, and 67 percent anticipate to accelerate their AI strategy even more
in 2021.

According to research, the financial crisis has accelerated the use of analytics and artificial
intelligence, and this trend is expected to continue into the 2020s. According to a poll
conducted by PwC, the Covid issue has accelerated 52 percent of companies' AI
implementation plans. By 2021, almost everyone (86%) expects AI will be a "mainstream
technology" at their company. According to a Harris Poll conducted in collaboration with
Appen, 55 percent of companies boosted their AI strategy in 2020 as a result of Covid, and
67 percent expect to increase their AI strategy even more in 2021.

According to Rob Jekielek, general director of Harris Poll, "AI is a vital factor in finding
answers to what is expected to be on-going, ever-changing skills demands and training."
"Through career transition assistance tools, AI is already beginning to help fill skills gaps in
the existing workforce." Employees are also benefiting from AI by adopting digital assistants
and in-house AI-driven training programmes to execute their current and evolving roles better
and quicker."

By boosting support operations, AI will also assist to ease skills shortages. "There is an
increasing demand for support workers because more and more items are either digital
products or other sorts of technology products with user interfaces," says Dr. Rebecca
Parsons, chief technology officer at Thoughtworks.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics are bringing new goods and services to market.
Analytics and artificial intelligence have aided corporations like Frito-Lay in speeding up
their innovation. During the epidemic, for example, the food company launched Snacks.com,
"our first excursion into the direct-to-consumer market," in just 30 days, according to
Lindsey. "To foresee store openings, fluctuations in demand due to return to work, and
changes in tastes that are allowing us to reset the product offers all the way down to the store
level inside a given zip code," he says, the firm is now using analytics to use its customer and
outlet data.
How have organizations become used to AI

Organizations have been fast to leverage their machine learning capabilities in the battle
against COVID-19 in various areas, including expanding consumer communications,
understanding how COVID-19 spreads, and speeding up research and treatment. The
COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as an opportunity for AI-enabled computer systems to
fight against the epidemic. Several companies are working on preventing, mitigating, and
containing the virus. Organizations have rushed to put their AI and machine learning
expertise to work in the battle against the pandemic. These technologies are being used in a
variety of fields, including research, healthcare, and even agriculture.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been quietly working
behind the scenes to help overcome the limits of human expertise in the immense task of
analysing and tracking the spread of COVID-19. Currently, a variety of AI-powered
initiatives based on data science, machine learning, and big data are being utilised in a variety
of sectors to forecast, explain, and manage the many scenarios produced by the health crisis.
AI is anticipating early COVID-19 signs and so controlling the spread of the virus, thanks to
the expanding usage of AI in the healthcare industry. It's also being used to test and follow
patients, as well as anticipate future illnesses, with the help of algorithms that analyse data
and discover trends.

The algorithms in this technology help healthcare companies to diagnose and tailor medical
care and follow-up plans more efficiently, resulting in improved patient experiences. At the
molecular level (e.g., medication and vaccine discovery), at the patient level (e.g., patient
diagnosis), and at the population level, AI is assisting with COVID-19 prevention (e.g.,
epidemiological surveillance). AI allows physicians to improve their capacity to treat patients
and provide effective treatment, as seen in the accompanying photos.
As social distance and quarantine measures remain in place, every type of company, whether
small or large, public or private, is discovering new methods to function successfully and
satisfy the demands of its customers and employees. By offering the capabilities to facilitate
distant communication, allow telemedicine, and preserve food security, machine learning
technology is playing a key role in supporting that change.

Examples of AI in times of the pandemic

The Chinese technology giant Alibaba’s research institute, Damo Academy has developed a
diagnostic algorithm that can detect new coronavirus cases with the chest Computed
Tomography (CT) scan. The AI model used in the system has been trained with the sample
data from over 5,000 positive coronavirus cases. In another instance, in June 2020, Lunit
developed an AI solution for x-ray analysis of the chest for simpler management of Covid-19
cases, and offer assistance in interpreting, monitoring, and patient trial.
In April 2020, Google launched an AI-enabled chatbot, called Rapid Response Virtual Agent
for call centers. This chatbot is built to respond to issues customers might be experiencing
due to COVID-19 over voice, chat, and social channels.

A new AI-driven platform will now help early intervention through rapid screening of
COVID 19 with the help of Chest X-ray interpretation over WhatsApp for doctors who have
access to X-ray machines. The solution called XraySetu can work with low-resolution images
sent via mobiles, is quick and easy to use, and can facilitate detection in rural areas.

For healthcare and government organisations, this includes deploying machine learning-
enabled chatbots for contactless COVID-19 symptom assessment and answering public
enquiries. Clevy.io, a French start-up and Amazon Web Services user, has built a chatbot to
help consumers access official government messages concerning COVID-19. The chatbot
analyses known symptoms and responds to inquiries regarding government policy using real-
time data from the French government and the World Health Organization. With over 3
million messages received to far, this chatbot can answer inquiries on everything from
exercise to a COVID-19 risk assessment without putting further on on healthcare and
government resources.

Soon after the covid-19 pandemic was proclaimed, the World Health Organization (WHO)
suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) may be a useful tool for dealing with the virus's
dilemma. Several worldwide healthcare systems have incorporated AI capabilities to add
agility to processes and assure timely patient care as a result of Covid-19 pushing healthcare
infrastructure to and beyond its limits. Self-learning algorithms are now being employed to
enable quick diagnosis, according to a Gartner, Inc. research, with AI-based CT image
interpretation systems being created to track illness development as well as discover and flag
anomalies on chest X-rays. In other circumstances, AI-based decision support systems have
demonstrated up to 95.5 percent accuracy in bolstering diagnoses by accounting for patients'
age, vital signs, and the existence of chronic diseases.
Food processors and governments must grasp the present situation of agriculture in order to
avoid any disruptions in the food supply chain. Agricultural technology start-up Another
AWS customer, Mantle Labs, is providing merchants in the UK with a free three-month trial
of their cutting-edge AI-driven crop-monitoring technology to bring more robustness and
assurance to supply chains. The system analyses satellite photographs of crops to alert
farmers and merchants to possible difficulties early on, allowing them to better manage
supply, procurement, and inventory planning. Custom machine learning algorithms are used
on the platform to combine imagery from several satellites, allowing for a near real-time
evaluation of agricultural conditions.

Machine learning is also assisting academics and practitioners in analysing massive amounts
of data to estimate COVID-19's spread in order to serve as an early warning system for future
pandemics and identify vulnerable groups. Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub in
California developed a model to predict the number of COVID-19 infections that go
unreported and the public health effects, examining 12 locations across the world. They
created new approaches to quantify undiagnosed infections using machine learning and
collaboration with the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative, studying how the virus
mutates as it moves across the population to predict how many transmissions have been
missed.
BlueDot, a Canadian start-up and AWS client that uses AI to detect disease outbreaks, was
one of the first to raise the alarm about a worrying epidemic of a respiratory infection in
Wuhan, China, at the outset of this pandemic. BlueDot employs artificial intelligence to
identify illness outbreaks. BlueDot sifts through news items in 65 languages, as well as
airline data and animal illness networks, using machine learning algorithms to discover
outbreaks and predict disease spread. Epidemiologists then examine the findings to ensure
that the conclusions are scientifically sound. BlueDot gives these data to public health
officials, airlines, and hospitals in order to assist them in anticipating and managing hazards.

Conclusion

AI, a basic technology of the fourth industrial revolution, is a critical non-medical

intervention for overcoming the present global health crisis, developing next-generation
pandemic preparation, and regaining resilience. While AI has a lot of potential, it also raises
fundamental concerns about justice, responsibility, privacy, transparency, and safety. This
collection seeks to answer these issues and looks forward to an intelligent healthcare future
based on best practises and lessons learned from employing artificial intelligence during the
covid-19 pandemic. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) technology and techniques play a
critical role in all aspects of the COVID-19 crisis response:

 gaining a better knowledge of the virus and advancing medication and therapeutic
research
 detecting, diagnosing, and forecasting the virus's evolution
 Surveillance and contact tracking are being used to help prevent or halt the spread of
the virus.
 Personalized information and learning are being used to respond to the health crisis.
 Monitoring the recovery and developing early warning systems are two things that
need to be done.

To enable AI researchers construct successful tools for the medical community, policymakers
should support the sharing of medical, biological, and scientific datasets and models on
collaborative platforms, and guarantee that researchers have access to the required processing
resources.

The pace with which these organisations are employing machine learning to combat COVID-
19 inspires and encourages the entire world. They have always believed in machine learning's
ability to assist address the world's most pressing problems, and that promise is now being
realised as corporations respond to this catastrophe. In this tough moment, I hope that we can
work together on a worldwide scale to develop and find new approaches for machine learning
to help in the fight against COVID-19.

The next wave of corporate expansion and innovation will be data-driven. As the globe
emerges from the Covid crisis, there will be chances for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and
innovators to create value and develop new companies that can be quickly re-configured and
re-aligned as client demands shift. Artificial intelligence and analytics, for example, will play
a vital role in enhancing company innovation and progress, as well as spurring new business
models, in this climate.
References:

 Wipro; https://www.wipro.com/blogs/radha-vuppalapati/the-role-of-artificial-
intelligence-in-fighting-covid-19/
 European Commission;
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/recovery-plan-europe/recovery-coronavirus-success-
stories/health/artificial-intelligence-can-help-us-combat-coronavirus_en
 The BMJ; https://www.bmj.com/AIcovid19
 Harvard Business Review; https://hbr.org/2021/09/ai-adoption-skyrocketed-over-the-
last-18-months#:~:text=Just%20about%20all%2C%2086%25%2C,their%20AI
%20strategy%20in%202021.
 Indian Ministry Department of Science and Tech; https://dst.gov.in/new-ai-driven-
platform-will-facilitate-early-covid-interventions-over-whatsapp

Article by:-

Dev Shroff

GNLU (2021-2026)