In recent times, Artificial Intelligence has been in the eye of the hurricane due to the controversy over AI-generated images and how they take advantage of copyright-protected creations for their algorithms. Be that as it may, it is undeniable that the processing power of Artificial Intelligence has many more useful and ethical possibilities.
If you thought that AI is a thing of the future, you are more than wrong. It’s already very much in your everyday life, as these examples from Google demonstrate, who are using AI to help people facing disease and natural disasters, and to provide new opportunities for underserved communities.
AI can save lives in disasters
Last year, the United Nations released a report indicating that half the world lacks adequate early warning systems for disasters like floods and fires . In response, we need life-saving technology to help keep people safe and governments to adequately prepare. Google has a flood forecasting program running that covers dozens of countries. Display forecast information in Search and Maps, and send alerts to mobile devices to notify people in distress. Also FloodHub features detailed flood maps so people can see exactly what to expect in their location.
On the other hand, the technology giant is also using satellite images to create AI models that can detect the limits of forest fires in real time and show their location in Search and Maps. Last year, those models were applied to more than 30 wildfires in the United States and Canada, helping to inform local residents and firefighters. Now the functionality is expanded to Mexico and parts of Australia as well. We’ll see when it arrives in Europe.
Open Buildings is an open access dataset project that also uses AI to interpret satellite imagery. This time, it is designed to identify the locations and geometry of buildings. This information is useful for a number of important applications, from population estimation, urban planning, and humanitarian response , to environmental and climate science. Available in Africa, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam, the project enables governments and aid organizations to better understand the needs of residents, both in daily life and in emergency situations. crisis.
Health and wellness uses
Through a partnership with PacBio, researchers are using DeepConsensus deep learning technology to quickly and accurately identify disease-causing genetic variants . This will help scientists discover serious genetic conditions, such as an elevated risk of breast cancer or pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Project Relate is an android application based on AI research, it helps people with non-standard speech to communicate more easily with others. You can transcribe speech into text, use a synthesized voice to repeat what’s been said, or communicate directly with the speaker’s Google Assistant to complete any number of tasks, from playing a song to turning on the lights.
Another use is in monitoring prenatal health . As global maternal mortality rates are unacceptably high, with some 295,000 women dying during and after pregnancy and childbirth in 2017, most from causes that could have been treated or prevented with proper medical care.
Google is working with Northwestern Medicine to develop and test AI models that enable poorly trained ultrasound operators in low-resource settings to accurately identify potential problems and risks, such as fetal positioning .