Can data save us from coronavirus? | Technology - Financial Times

Big data and machine learning should be helping contain the pandemic — but their usefulness has been limited, continues Financial Times.

Will data science save us from the pandemic? 

Photo: JumpStory

Big data and machine learning — the twin engines behind the recent boom in artificial intelligence — have been touted in the tech world as technologies capable of delivering huge social benefit. 

Watching them being applied to a global health crisis unfolding in real time shows both their promise and their shortcomings. Machine-learning systems employ a form of pattern recognition that is of broad use at a time like this, according to Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI. She was speaking at a hastily-arranged online conference this week to consider the many ways that AI is being brought to bear...

It is too soon to tell whether these and many other attempts to break down the barriers and make existing bodies of information more useful are coming soon enough to have a marked impact on the fight against the threat from Covid-19. But they at least point to one silver lining from this pandemic. The new forms of data sharing they are forcing should provide a template for when the next health crisis hits, as well as better co-ordination inside and between healthcare systems to improve the quality of care even in normal times.
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Source: Financial Times