Top minds meet to discuss AI and human security
Health-care experts, researchers and computer scientists shared insights on how artificial intelligence can better protect humanity's future.
At a roundtable talk at the ongoing World Artificial Intelligence Conference hosed by Zhu Min, chair of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University, participants called for more collaboration between public and private parties.
Zhu praised the Shanghai government's vision to hold this industry conference to bring stakeholders and industry experts to invite a wide range of discussions.
"Surely we're seeing a big trend of AI being applied in a wide range of industries. How private sectors partner with government authorities and how they respond to policy shifts require in-depth discussion," he added.
Dr Zhang Wenhong, chief of the experts team for coronavirus treatment in Shanghai, said AI is still in the very beginning of deploying quarantine materials and personal protection equipment.
"A lot of community work to track and isolate patients during the epidemic outbreak relied on AI. For AI to play a bigger role in aiding public health efforts, data must be better shared and integrated," Zhang said.
"Although I don't feel like being replaced by a machine giving diagnoses and prescriptions for patients, I look forward to AI's ability to better combine online and offline data and to make us better prepared for the future," he said.
"In terms of precautionary measures to fight the pandemic, we need to speed up data-collecting capabilities from the real world, from online platforms, from health-care institutions, and the integration of treatment and prevention heavily relies on smart data," he pointed.
President of Tongji University Chen Jie said facial recognition and temperature sensors have been put into use after students and faculty returned to campus.
AI applications in pandemic fighting and public health measures are largely restricted to high-quality data. How to identify authentic data and tell apart different formats of data will be a big challenge for AI development, he added.
Shen Xiangyang, former executive vice president of Artificial Intelligence & Research at Microsoft, said new collaboration schemes could benefit more patients, which is important for developing and developed countries alike.
“Chinese, US and other companies in the world are doing their work to share healthcare data with strict privacy protocols and in standard formats to boost research work," Shen said.
