Strategy card against dangerous mysterious virus in China: It is 'Artificial Intelligence'

On the Chinese days of Tet, their wet wet markets are really bustling. Piles of pork, cattle, poultry, and reptile stables (snakes, lizards, etc.) are piled up, waiting for each arrival to prepare for the New Year's feast.

But in such markets, death is lurking. In recent weeks, China has a strange outbreak of pneumonia, and scientists believe that the cause of a new virus comes from a fresh market of Wuhan City (Hubei).

The new virus, called 2019-nCov , belongs to the Corona strain, a family of viruses that cause the SARS epidemic, which killed 800 people in 2003. Authorities say the virus infects humans from animals and confirmed the dead. receive the possibility of human-to-human transmission. Currently, scientists are urgently studying the spread of the new virus, and identifying high-risk locations.

The new virus belongs to the strain of Corona virus, the same family that causes SARS.(Illustration).

AI - "trump card" helps fight disease

AI - or artificial intelligence will help people fight against diseases in Wuhan and similar diseases in the future - this is the judgment of Dr. Daniel Streicker, a scientist from the University of Glasgow (Scotland). .

"AI can collect information about human travel routes, through aviation archives and public transportation." - Streicker said. Creating such an AI needs to be a priority, in order to accurately predict the potential for spread when any disease occurs.

Seattle-based Vulcan, for example, owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is currently using AI to study the potential for Ebola to spread. Or as Harvard Medical Department is also doing a research in Bangladesh, using data from phones to track the movement of people across the country to predict the spread of diseases. . Johns Hopkins University uses data from Twitter, to know where the disease originated.

The power of AI shows that you can gather all data sources for analysis.

In fact, the use of AI in health has also made certain achievements. Since 2008, Google has started a service that identifies flu outbreaks, based on users' search habits. The service even identified 2009 swine flu in the United States two weeks before the US Department of Health issued an official announcement. However, this service was closed later because of the inaccurate determination of infection, causing panic in public opinion.

According to Mason Marks, an associate professor of law at Gonzaga University (Washington), many technology companies are gradually turning to using "floating medical data" - meaning information provided by AI and speculated based on Actions unrelated to the user's health. From buying habits, searching, conversations . all can be collected, forming a larger database (Big Data).

"A doctor can cure a lifetime and will not be able to obtain information only AI can provide" - Marks said. Even information such as "innocence" such as swearing will help AI to predict disease.

"The power of AI is shown in that you can gather all data sources for analysis. For the new virus in China, the problem is that we don't have enough data models to make major predictions. " - Streicker shared.

According to Marks, the next step will be to use AI to identify diseases of more specific individuals. The only problem is that places like China are already using citizenship identification system, AI can transform and lead to false choices.

"When an epidemic occurs, the whole world is at risk. So if there is a tool to help identify each person, preventing them from moving away will be an advantage. if used too often with many objects ".

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