Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that is engaged in the development of intelligent computer systems

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence, human brain and corona virus

The last 48 hours of 2019 were a critical moment in which the scope of the new virus was understood.

On December 30, the doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital Li Wenliang warned his friends about the virus on a social network, an attitude for which he was interrogated for

Did artificial intelligence knockdown the human brain by predicting a severe outbreak of coronavirus in China ?

But while humans perhaps did not do it with the same speed, they compensated for this with certain attitudes.

Early detection of an outbreak can help save lives.

At the end of 2019, a Boston artificial intelligence (AI) system issued the first global alert about an outbreak of a virus in China.

But it was human intelligence that realized the magnitude of the outbreak and sought answers from the medical community.

What’s more, mere mortals issued a similar alert just half an hour later than AI systems.

For now, AI disease alert systems seem more like car alarms: They make a noise about anything and are sometimes ignored.

A network of medical experts and detectives must analyze more material to get an accurate idea of what happened.

It is hard to say what impact the AI systems of the future can have, fueled by increasingly large databases, in terms of disease outbreaks.

The first public alert outside China about the novel coronavirus arrived on December 30, from the automated HealthMap system at Boston Children’s Hospital.

At 11.12 p.m., HealthMa issued an alert about unidentified pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan .

The system, which analyzes online news and social media reports, gave its alert a category of three on a scale of five.

It took HealthMap researchers several days to realize the severity of the outbreak.

Four hours before the HealthMap alert, the New York epidemiologist Marjorie Pollack had started working on her own alert, motivated by a personal email she had received shortly before.

“This is being distributed through the internet here,” wrote his contact, who reprinted a post on a Pincong internet forum.

The post spoke of a warning from the body that manages health in Wuhan and said: Unexplained pneumonia?

Pollack, who is deputy director of the Program for the Monitoring of New Diseases, run by volunteers and is known as ProMed, promptly mobilized a team to analyze the matter.

A more detailed ProMed report circulated about 30 minutes after the brief HealthMap alert.

Emergency detection systems that analyze social networks, news on the internet and government reports for signs of infectious disease outbreaks help inform international agencies such as the World Health Organization

, allowing experts take the bull by the antlers early without tripping over bureaucratic and language obstacles.

Some systems, including ProMed, take advantage of the human experience.

And more than competing with each other, they often complement each other, as is the case with HealthMap and ProMed.

Li, who died on February 7 following the virus, told The New York Times that it would have been better if the authorities offered information about the epidemic before.

“They should be more open and transparent,” he said.

The effectiveness of the algorithms depends on the information they collect, said Nita Madhav, CEO of the San Francisco Metabiota disease monitoring company.

Madhav said that inconsistencies in the way each agency distributes medical information can affect algorithms and that to avoid confusion there is almost always a human being involved in the

Scientists are using databases to determine possible disease transmission routes.

The last 48 hours of 2019 were a critical moment in which the scope of the new virus was understood.

On December 30, the doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital Li Wenliang warned his friends about the virus on a social network, an attitude for which he was interrogated for

In early January, Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease doctor and researcher at Toronto General Hospital, analyzed commercial flight information with Kamran Khan, founder of BlueDot, to see which cities outside

But by then 5 million people had escaped from the city, the mayor admitted.

“We showed that the most common destinations were Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong,” Bogoch said.

“It turns out that a few days later we started seeing cases in those places.”

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence helps to fight against the epidemic

After the outbreak of pneumonia caused by a new type of coronavirus, a number of artificial intelligence technologies have played a role in preventing and combating the epidemic in China. Some of them were urgently involved to help contain the spread of the epidemic.

For example, intelligent identification technologies are able to quickly recognize potential patients in conditions of high density of human flow. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China on February 6, many companies use technology of deep learning, artificial intelligence, image recognition to activate infrared imagers to increase the efficiency of temperature measurement and the accuracy of detection of persons with abnormal body temperature. This allows automatic intelligent measurement of body temperature in public places.

During the epidemic, Alibaba will provide its AI capabilities and research facilities to government research institutions around the world for free to accelerate the development of new drugs and vaccines for pneumonia caused by a new type of coronavirus.

During the prevention and control of the epidemic, intelligent robots “entered the service” in many hospitals, which effectively reduces the risk of cross infections. Intelligent disinfection robots developed by Shanghai-based TMiRob have begun working in the hospitals in Wuhan and Shanghai. Smart machines perform disinfection tasks around the clock in isolation wards, intensive care units, operating rooms, and outpatient departments. They help reduce the risks of cross-contamination and ensure the safety of medical staff.

Wuhan Tongji Tian Hospital and Shanghai 6th People’s Hospital delivered 5G temperature-checking robots jointly developed by the Cloudminds science and technology company and China Mobile. A 5G-enabled robot measures temperature using infrared body temperature control devices and other sensors. In case of detection of persons with abnormal body temperature, the device gives an alarm.

Big data can track the epidemic. Tech companies such as Megvii, CloudWalk, Intellifusion, Tencent, Iflytech, Sogou, Inspur, 4Paradigm, JD Digits, using big data mining to track people’s movements and using multivariate analysis and modeling, are building a multidimensional machine learning model to predict infection risks .

Iflytech Provided Prov. Hubei smart classes, namely, a live online learning system. On February 2, 175 schools connected to this system, a total of 220 thousand students attended the classes, the maximum number of students who simultaneously listened to online lessons was 100 thousand.

Artificial Intelligence

How Artificial Intelligence is changing jobs

Dive into the world of Artificial Intelligence and its profound effects on the future of work

If we look at jobs today, we will see a team of three generations, each of which takes technology in different ways and the degree of immersion in their capabilities.

So, Generation X builds workflows with email, phone calls, and face-to-face meetings. Social media messengers use millennials for communication. And the digital generation prefers a comfortable mix of technologies, personal gadgets and applications at its discretion. But the goal for all is the same – to save time on a routine in order to pay attention to tasks that require a creative approach or emotional involvement.

Modern technologies are ready to provide each generation with solutions for productive work, and, first of all, collective, as an employee spends 80% of his time working with someone in organizations, companies, and projects. This trend will be relevant in 2020. Another trend that we will observe this year is remote work. Therefore, IT companies and program developers around the world are working hard to create solutions that meet the requirements of a modern workplace, and most of these solutions involve artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence is a pleasant routine

Thinking about artificial intelligence ( AI), most of us probably represent robots and science fiction stories. But you already use AI every day – perhaps without even realizing it.

So, personal assistants in smartphones clean up the schedule, control costs, remind of the meeting. Special programs track preferences and display ads that are relevant to our needs on social networks or on Internet resources. Chatbots answer questions quickly, accurately, 24/7. And all this is AI in action.

Artificial Intelligence in the workplace

Probably, no modern communication at the workplace can do without e-mail, video communications, presentations, chat bots and help desk. AI expanded their functionality, making it significantly more comfortable and productive.

Digital letters

Email has been around for a long time, and almost everyone has at least one email address. However, it still continues to evolve, adapting to the needs of the workplace. For example, today you can connect Microsoft Outlook to your LinkedIn profile and send a letter directly to the subscriber simply by entering his name in the “ To” line, and it is not necessary to know the e-mail address.

Email uses artificial intelligence to filter out 99% of spam, so he did not get into the folder ” Inbox” or to create a ” smart answers” who try to imitate your personal writing style.

And with the help of AI, you can correct grammatical errors in the body of the letter and book conference rooms of the company, which are ideal for visitors to meetings, because AI in Outlook has already analyzed colleagues’ schedules, free time, room availability and other parameters.

Video calling

Video conferencing or video chat is an important part of the workflow, especially when remote work and freelance are becoming more popular. The opportunity to see someone’s face, even if the person is thousands of kilometers away, offers a deeper level of communication.

But if you call from home or any other place, and the background does not match the level of the meeting, artificial intelligence will come to the rescue. Blur background and face recognition . This will help hide the likely mess behind you, focusing only on you.

Artificial intelligence will also help to find a common language with people. So, programs help people understand each other in real time, while communicating with other people in all corners of the world. What is needed for an international project in which several countries are involved. So AI unites people and overcomes language barriers.

Presentations

Almost everyone uses presentations in their work. To make them attractive, companies rarely turn to designers, since not every budget can withstand their fees.

Imagine the situation: you made a presentation with perfect miniatures and are ready to present them, say, to your foreign colleagues. At the last minute, you find out that not all of them speak English. Do not worry, AI will help. While you are speaking in the conference room, PowerPoint will listen to what you are saying, write in English on the screen and translate it into the language of your choice in real time. Moreover, the AI trainer function will help prepare for an important speech by sharing directions on the pace or content of the speech in the report.

Chatbots on the robot

Chat bot is well integrated into work processes. So, HR specialists actively use the chatbot to adapt staff to the new workplace, which significantly reduces the time for new employees to master job descriptions, introduces information about the company, products and services.

The recruiting bot instantly answers questions of employees and candidates day and night. This is beneficial to both parties. Employees do not wait long for answers, and the HR department can devote more time to improving the work of the company.

Also, artificial intelligence in the HR sector sorts resumes according to the needs of the employer, conducts video interviews, tests staff, improves communication in a team, and the like.

Artificial Intelligence in Help desk

The help desk serves as a “ single window” for users to communicate with specialists of the IT department, whose primary task is to service and provide the company’s personnel with high-quality technical support. Artificial intelligence will sort requests by priority, quickly fix problems in the system, or through a chat bot to answer questions.

AI continues to automate processes and create new opportunities for people and teams in the workplace. So get ready for new experiences.

Artificial Intelligence

How artificial intelligence detects unreal and misinformation

Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Alphabet (the parent company of Google), has announced two services through which media, especially those on the Web, will be able to combat false content and misinformation.

Information about Jigsaw’s new developments, an AI-based service that detects editing traces on all types of photographs, and an interactive platform that combines information about coordinated disinformation campaigns, The New York Times reported citing The Current, a research publication by Jigsaw.

All to fight with fakes!

The fake photo detection service is called Assembler. As its developers stated in the media, it is not always easy, and sometimes impossible, to distinguish real photos from fake ones taken masterfully. But, since the amount of false content on the Web is growing exponentially, the need for such a service has never been so urgent. The tool developed by Jigsaw makes it possible to verify the authenticity of images and detect all traces of editing on any type of photo. Including those that were created using artificial intelligence.

Assembler consists of seven different image detectors, each configured to detect a specific type of photo manipulation technique.

Five of these seven detectors were developed by research teams from a number of universities in the world, including the University of California at Berkeley (USA), the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and the University of Maryland (USA).

After the image has been processed – for example, two images were combined into one or something was removed from the background of the image, traces of these changes may remain. Special software based on artificial intelligence analyzes the image, compares it with previously analyzed samples and examples, and allows you to detect places with traces of modifications on the image. Detectors, for example, can find changes such as anomalies in the color pattern, areas of the image that have been copied and pasted several times, the use of several camera models to create an image, and so on.

“These detectors cannot completely solve the problem, but they are an important tool to combat misinformation,” said Luisa Verdoliva, a professor at the University of Naples and a visiting scholar at Google AI.

Two other detectors are designed by Jigsaw engineers. They are designed to identify “deep fakes” – realistic images that have undergone serious manipulations using artificial intelligence, which can mislead the most sophisticated representatives of the target audience of any media.

“Assembler is most useful in situations where a journalist from a major news outlet who has received some scandalous image begins to come under pressure – he is literally forced to publish scandalous news based on it,” said Santiago Andrigo, product manager at Jigsaw. – The service can also be used to check images that have become “viral”.

“We watched disinformation increasingly be used to manipulate elections, wage war and destroy civil society,” wrote Jared Cohen, executive director of Jigsaw, on the Assemble blog. “But, as disinformation tactics evolved, so did the technology used to detect it.”

According to Jigsaw experts, Assembler is being tested in over 10 news and factual organizations around the world. Among them – Animal Politico (Mexico), Rappler (Philippines) and Agence France-Presse (France). For media access to the service is provided free of charge. However, opening access to private individuals is not intended.

Disinformation Detection Platform

Another tool announced by The New York Times is an interactive platform that brings together information about coordinated disinformation campaigns conducted around the world over the past 10 years. The platform’s database contains the players participating in influence operations, the general tactics used in them, as well as the methods and methods of disseminating misinformation on social networking platforms.

As part of this project, Jigsaw experts collaborated with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (Washington, USA), which studies the links between social networks, cybersecurity and government. B olee than 700 studies, articles and reports published by this laboratory over the past five years, Jigsaw selected for their interactive platform 60 cases of misinformation.

As Emerson Brooking, a laboratory employee, commented, the goal of this project is not to make an encyclopedic list of disinformation campaigns, but to create a basis, a kind of “common language” for describing them, to develop principles and practice of classification that would help the media and disinformation groups.

Whether the Russian media will be able to access these services is still unknown. As well as the extent to which the project of the interactive platform Jigsaw can be engaged by the Atlantic Council, a non-governmental organization known for its hostility towards Russia and repeatedly advised the US government to create a coalition to counteract “Russian propaganda media”. For this, it was included in the list of foreign organizations whose activities on the territory of the Russian Federation were recognized as undesirable. By the way, pOn media reports citing the draft US budget published earlier this month, a budget of $ 24 million is planned for the Global Engagement Center, which was created specifically to counter Russian propaganda.

Artificial Intelligence

Will artificial intelligence be responsible for saving whales?

In the case of killer whales, which are so difficult to track that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers that they do not have sufficient data to determine their conservation status, efforts are focused for the moment on the population of the sea of Salish, where it has been possible to record a decline of hundreds of copies to only 73 today.

Knowing the real-time location of whales in the sea , which could be key to protecting them from the traffic of ships and oil spills, has ceased to be a distant desire of conservation groups to become a reality thanks to the use of techniques of artificial intelligence.

Knowing where a group of cetaceans is at all times allows orders to be given to fishing vessels to avoid that area – thus preventing collisions and accidental catches -, center cleaning tasks after a black tide in the areas of most need or create protected areas in the spaces where they spend more time.

But, if it is already difficult to track animals on land, how is it possible to do so in the immensity of the oceans, with species that travel thousands of kilometers and that are extremely difficult even to censor?

The answer can be found in artificial intelligence.

A collaborative project between the NGO Rainforest Connection (which already uses artificial intelligence to fight deforestation in the Amazon), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans of Canada and Google has proposed to “monitor” the threatened population of killer whales in the Salish Sea, which bathes the shores of metropolis like Seattle and Vancouver.

“The logic is the same that we apply in the case of the Amazon. We use acoustic signals to locate the whales and transfer that information to the relevant authorities so that they can act accordingly,” explained the founder of Rainforest Connection, Topher White.

The acoustic signals are recorded at the bottom of the ocean by devices called hydrophones that are held by cables and have network infrastructure to send audios in real time to a server, from which they are transmitted to an artificial intelligence system.

Among the infinite hours and hours of audio, the artificial intelligence model is designed to detect whale songs, which, given the speed and long distance at which sound travels underwater, can be captured up to 50 kilometers away.

“Our job in this project is to teach artificial intelligence systems to detect, among all the variety of sounds captured in the ocean, specific species such as humpback whales or killer whales,” said Google AI product manager Julie Cattiau.

In the case of killer whales, which are so difficult to track that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers that they do not have enough data to determine their conservation status, efforts are focused for the moment on the population of the sea of Salish, where it has been possible to record a decline of hundreds of copies to only 73 today.

Responsible for capturing the sounds through a dozen hydrophones distributed in relatively shallow water areas is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans of Canada, which, just to teach artificial intelligence models, already provided programmers with 1,800 hours of audio submarine and 68,000 “tags” that identified the different sounds.

“It is clear that we will not be able to cover the entire ocean with these devices, but you can choose specific places that are important. For example, navigation routes are generally very well defined, and are of course a good place to go. the one to start, “said Matt Harvey, software engineer at Google AI.

With regard to humpback whales, the other species for which artificial intelligence models have been taught for the time being, monitoring is concentrated in the Hawaiian archipelago, and these represent an additional challenge, since the sounds that they emit are complex songs, with a great variety of vocalizations that even change over time.

Thus, perhaps unexpectedly for the general public, artificial intelligence has emerged as a useful tool to respond in the 21st century to which for decades it has been one of the most publicized challenges of the conservation movement: save the whales.