"Computer scientists and machine learning researchers are tackling the pandemic the way they know how: compiling datasets and building algorithms to learn from them."
"The system uses AI to predict situations before they occur - thus informing on how resources could be better allocated - and to provide insights for better decision-making."
"When Reddit user Throwaway59724 had to start working from home because of Covid, they learned how to automate their IT job duties so they don't have to work more than 10 minutes a day to earn their "just-shy-of-90k" salary."
"According to Folding@Home, the organisation that runs the distributed computing effort, the combined power of the network broke 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second - or one "exaflop" - on 25 March."
Exscientia recently claimed a world first when it announced that human tests of the first drug generated entirely by AI – for obsessive-compulsive disorder – would start in March. The project took less than 12 months, instead of the usual four to five years.
"The computers are connected into a kind of hive mind via a downloadable software, allowing the system to run calculations with greater speed and efficiency than any individual device.
This is necessary to do the complex work of simulating how the proteins that make up the novel coronavirus behave and where there could be potential binding sites for drugs to latch on to."
"But historically, these tools have been put into use only after a rigorous peer review of the raw data and statistical analyses used to develop them. Epic's Deterioration Index, on the other hand, remains proprietary despite its widespread deployment. Although physicians are provided with a list of the variables used to calculate the index and a rough estimate of each variable's impact on the score, we aren't allowed under the hood to evaluate the raw data and calculations. "