Apr 17, 2020
In COVID-related AI topics, Andy and Dave discuss an emerging
crop (no less than three!) of COVID-19 cough detectors that attempt
to diagnose the presence of COVID by various voice measurements. In
a similar vein, but for different purposes, the U.S. drone maker
Draganfly announces it is working with the Australian Department of
Defence to produce “pandemic drones,” which can detect coughing,
sneezing, and respiratory rate at a difference. Folding@home has
shifted its crowdsourcing computational power toward the COVID-19
problem set. In non-COVID news items, researchers at the University
of California San Francisco have used deep learning algorithms to
translate human brain signals for a set of 250 unique words, by
recording brain signals for sentences as patients read them. In
research, Uber AI and OpenAI announces their Enhanced POET (Pair
Open-ended Trailblazer), which uses a procedural environment to
create problems (gaps, stumps, stairs), which the agent then learns
to solve, producing a diverse range of sophisticated behaviors.
DeepMind reveals Agent57, the first reinforcement learning agent
capable of surpassing the human benchmark for all 57 Atari games
(though it still must be trained on each individually), using Never
Give Up (NGU) memory to identify new environments, as well
encouraging exploration and other components. The Survey of the
Week takes a look at the development of deep learning for
scientific discovery. A report from the BMJ suggests that studies
claiming that AI outperforms doctors are “arguably exaggerated,”
with a high risk to bias identified in 58 out of 81 studies. A New
Conception of War, by Ian Brown, makes the Free Book of the Week,
coming from the Marine Corps University Press; among many important
concepts, it stresses the importance of debate and intellectual
exploration among professional warfighters. Johns Hopkins APL is
hosting a virtual event on Operationalizing AI in Health on 21
April. And Intelligent Heath Inspired! seeks to hold the largest
summit on 25-27 May on the use of AI in medicine, with particular
focus on COVID-19.
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