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Theator’s AI, analytics give surgeons, patients a real shot in the arm
By Oladimeji Ewumi | Dec 08, 2023
Silicon Valley healthtech Theator crunches surgical data to optimize surgeons’ performance and ensure better patient experiences. Its co-founder and CEO Tamir Wolf lately sat down with The Yuan to present the firm’s latest advances set to transform surgical operations.







QC in AI prompts much ballyhoo, but also holds real applicationsFanfare abounds about quantum computing, but this is increasingly justified, especially as QC and AI integrate ever more closely. AI expert Prof Patrick Glauner of Germany’s Deggendorf Institute of Technology describes the current dynamic and forecasts its future course.


AI-driven unemployment grabs headlines, but is more myth than realityPotential mass unemployment caused by AI has led to much handwringing, but a closer look reveals a more nuanced picture, argues Keun Lee, economics professor and former vice chair of the National Economic Advisory Council for the President of South Korea.







The Yuan favorites
Metaverse
Has the concept of the metaverse failed, or is it still too early to tell?
This, the fourth in an article series titled Life and Crime in the Metaverse, examines the metaverse today and the question of whether it will ever reach its potential. Some already view it as a failure, but it could just be a steppingstone to something bigger and better.
Metaverse
The Yuan raises the red flag, wards off incursions by GAI chatbots
As GAIs such as ChatGPT find ever-wider use, this exciting development also risks obsoleting many human functions. ‘Singularitarians’ may hail this step, but The Yuan is committed to keeping humans in the loop, and so offers this cautionary tale for our contributors’ edification.
Metaverse
Life and crime in the metaverse: Trust, trustless, and zero trust
This, the third in an article series titled Life and Crime in the Metaverse, examines the idea of trust, how to engage in online transactions and other interactions in its absence, and what this signifies in the metaverse context.
Metaverse
Metaverse healthcare system applications are based on the discovery layer
In the second part of his series of articles on the Metaverse, AI engineer Douglas Amante takes a look at what the discovery layer of the Metaverse is and how healthcare-related applications fit in as they become an increasingly integral part of people’s lives.
Optimization
DL can now be used to automatically classify, segment liver tumors
Automatic DL-based methods for semantic pixel-by-pixel classification and segmentation of liver tumors hold the key to detecting this type of cancer earlier and preventing the worst outcomes. AI and health expert Parisa Naraei conducts a tour of their workings.
Optimization
Federated graph neural networks ease the data burden of AI training
Federated networks form models in which several separate networks or locations share resources via central management frameworks to enforce consistent configurations and policies. Anna Saranti, a postdoc researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, explains their workings.
Optimization
Top AI and policy experts call for an international AI safety treaty
A league of AI VIPs has signed an open letter urging an AI safety treaty. Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio and The Yuan’s contributors Gary Marcus and David Wood joined with many others to call for setup of a working group at the UK AI safety Summit now underway as a first step.
Optimization
AI, robotics deploy in hospitality, healthcare to supply labor shortfall
Hospitality and healthcare have been hard hit by COVID-19 and labor shortages. AI and robotics are cushioning this blow and though they may eliminate some jobs they will ease and improve the quality of others, writes Sanjeev Shetty, co-founder of Robotics-as-a-service company HelloGard Robotics.
Governance
A forecaster’s foray into AI safety
The unchecked advancement of AI systems is a ticking time bomb. It’s time to regulate, writes superforecaster Tolga Bilge.
Governance
The Bletchley Park summit on AI safety deserves two and a half cheers
There was a good deal of scepticism ahead of the summit on AI safety which took place at Bletchley Park earlier this month. Many world leaders decided to stay away, but the doubts about the organisers sticking to their more ambitious goals proved unfounded. For the first time, political leaders have publicly acknowledged the existential risk of advanced AI, and a global conversation is under way.
Governance
Chinese regulators are giving the country’s AI firms a leg up
Chinese GenAI firms have to clear many hurdles to succeed, but the country’s government supports them - in contrast to the EU and US - and is taking active measures to do so, while also crafting less arbitrary policies and requirements, says Hong Kong Law Prof Angela Huyue Zhang.
Governance
The United Nations is ready to play its part
Leading AI nations in attendance have reached a world-first agreement establishing a shared understanding of the opportunities and risks posed by frontier AI. The Secretary-General of the UN comments during day one of the UK AI summit.
Cognition
Philosophy for chatbots may sound silly, but holds important lessons
In this open letter to a virtual chatbot, as ‘AI’ wins the ‘word of the year’ award, computational physicist Roger Kingdon gives a remedial lesson to remind his imaginary correspondent of distinctions between facts and values, as enshrined in key tenets of analytic philosophy.
Cognition
Humans must stay in the loop as ChatGPT attends med school, upends medicine
ChatGPT is an aid at times, but unreliable in medicine, especially in critical situations. Various issues will vanish as the tech improves, but others will prove more intractable and need human intervention. Dr Jennifer Dunphy, senior VP for a top physician association, explains.
Cognition
Running and entrepreneurship may seem unrelated, but have many synergies
Runners and entrepreneurs seemingly have little in common, though both pursuits demand persistence, endurance, a willingness to overcome setbacks and shake off inertia, and many other similarities. Radiologist, healthcare exec, and runner Dr Gustavo Meirelles gets us up to speed.
Cognition
An adaptive mindset is an indispensable component of AI ethics
The first part of this multi-part article series focuses on The Adaptive Mindset part of the Agile Leadership Framework™ introduced in the previous article, writes Dr Frank Lee Harper, Jr, AI thought leader and provost and vice chancellor at Cambridge Corporate University.
Pandemic
Network science plays a critical role in modeling how epidemics play out
The devastation wrought by the pandemic highlights the importance of modeling epidemics to chart their progress. Mathematician and data scientist Colleen Farrelly gives the lowdown on using equations on human networks to map their infection and show the ebb and flow of contagion.
Pandemic
How different countries leveraged the power of AI to navigate COVID-19
This first part of a series explores how AI helped the world weather COVID-19 and at least partially cushion its impact. While the pandemic exposed many shortcomings, it also shed light on future improvements. Biomedical engineer and med-tech innovator Anjali Rajan presents a glimpse into popular AI applications in pandemic management deployed by five countries.
Pandemic
The COVID-19 Calculator
With the evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with seemingly ever-changing recommendations, restrictions, and government guidance, trying to assess one’s own personal level of risk at any given time or location can be confusing. Now, with the development of the COVID-19 calculator, people finally have a tool to cut through all the uncertainty and determine their own risk of infection accurately and flexibly.
Pandemic
Experts Claim CT Scans For COVID-19 Diagnosis is Flawed
As the novel coronavirus evolved from epidemic to pandemic, early research suggested CT scans provided the best diagnosis for COVID-19. It turns out that the information was flawed. Data scientist and Google Scholar Dan Elton takes a closer look at the studies published.
Game-changers
The Yuan retrospective on 2023 AI healthcare revolution
As 2023 nears its conclusion, AI is transforming and dominating healthcare to an extent that many are unaware of. From drug discovery to treatment and beyond, author, entrepreneur, and The Yuan contributor Dr Rohit Thanki puts into focus the kaleidoscope of AI applications in medicine and prognosticates their future course.
Game-changers
AI is stealthily redefining, revolutionizing auditory health
The hard of hearing are struggling to cope, but AI Is at last promising to transform this predicament for around 2.5 billion people by 2050, writes Ganes Kesari, entrepreneur, AI thought leader, author, adjunct professor, and founder of data science advisor Innovation Titan.
Game-changers
Hyper-personalization 2.0 to mean AI-driven individualized experiences
Personalized experiences are nothing new, but as the world becomes more digitalized and AI-driven, personalization will hit new levels and offer previously unimaginable possibilities for governments, companies, and individuals, writes Iman Oubou, co-founder and CEO of Vocable.ai.
Game-changers
AI is humanity’s best chance to even the climate playing field
The world is likely to miss its target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, with potentially serious consequences. Business as usual is not an option, which means that AI must play a big role for humanity to avoid the worst of climate change.
‘AI ethics’ are doomed to failure - Part 1
As efforts to improve AI governance and devise rules governing its use gain momentum, ‘ethics’ is a buzzword that often pops up in talks of how to make AI more benign. The problem, however, is that the concept of AI ethics lacks substance and thus risks becoming meaningless. How to resolve this seeming paradox? Emmanuel R. Goffi, co-founder and co-director of the Paris-based Global AI Ethics Institute, weighs in.
The Yuan fetes the second anniversary of its founding, razes its paywall
As The Yuan celebrates our second anniversary, our Chief Editor Wang Shifeng briefly reviews AI developments over the past two years, and announces that our paywall has ended, as we are shifting from a paid subscription model, to a voluntary contribution plan to defray our costs.
Can ‘AI’ outsmart humans? That depends on how one defines ‘smart’
Whether machines will ever outsmart humans is a question of the use of language and the inadequacy of programming because, on their own, machines are not clever, says Nigel Morris-Cotterill, author of The Yuan’s ‘Imaginary Friends’ series, on day 14 of The Yuan’s voyage of intelligent discovery.
The next trillion-dollar business: personal AI assistants - part 2
The first article in this series was on how the success of ChatGPT indicates personal AI assistants are the next wave. This part discusses the difficulties of making a PAI assistant, means to overcome these obstacles, and why self-driving carmakers must jump on the PAI bandwagon.
‘Terminator’ or ‘Terra-minator’? The Yuan announces its ESG manifesto
Fears of AI leapfrogging human cognition and ushering in Doomsday abound. The current impact of AI and ML, which devour vast energy, yield tons of toxic waste, and cleave deep social chasms, gleans less notice. The Yuan hereby proclaims our ESG policy to help safeguard our Earth.
Imaginary Friends 5: ‘The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers’
This time, the four imaginary friends gather together once more to consider the importance of precision in language as they examine vocabulary, grammar, and inflection. Imprecise language can be especially problematic with AI, which can easily get confused and spit out answers or take actions that are incorrect.
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