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Who needs governments? AI prompts the question already on the minds of many
By Naseem Javed | May 10, 2024
The world is seriously underachieving, and countries everywhere must now redouble their efforts to attract FDI, make full use of their entrepreneurs and other talents, and take advantage of the opportunities AI provides. Naseem Javed, an expert on new ways of thinking, weighs in.
Warren Buffett strikes a gloomy note over AI at his company’s annual confab
Warren Buffett, the éminence grise of investment, took the occasion of his company shareholders’ meeting to air his views on AI - part upbeat and part desponding. Though concededly no AI maven, Buffet’s remarks made waves nonetheless as he voiced his hopes and fears for the tech.
Data, infrastructure barriers hamper AI's cure of Africa's healthcare woes
Africa will gain the most from AI’s activation in healthcare, but the road to fulfilling this vision is a rocky one. Fulbright Scholar Ahmed Zahlan, who is pursuing his PhD in AI healthcare startups, charts the path the second most populous continent must take to reach this goal.
Air Canvas using Python libraries reveals much about art in the digital age
In the current digital age of advanced tech, the boundaries between art, science, and technology are increasingly blurring. Researcher Parisa Naraei describes a project exploring the concept of computer vision and its workings, with various intriguing applications.
Lessons learned from AI chatbots will encourage their responsible use
Chatbots are widespread forms of AI and, while they handle many routine tasks effectively, too often they are left to deal with problems for which they are ill-equipped, prompting scandals and bad experiences. AI and legal expert Prof Eran Kahana cites an illustrative case study.
Stay tuned for The Yuan’s brain science themed webinar this July!
The Yuan recently ran a three-week series of articles from April 1 to April 19, with topics examining the intersection of neuroscience and AI. The series was a great success and will be followed up in July by a webinar featuring some of the series’ outstanding contributors.
Can AI deliver long-awaited breakthroughs in assessing stroke risk?Medical professionals toil hard to gauge stroke risk among aging populations earlier and more accurately. Incremental improvements have come, but big breakthroughs remain elusive as lack of access to care and AI jitters thwart efforts, as Harvard Med Fellow Rohit Agrawal, MD, MPH explains.
India’s DPDP Act is poised to enforce a strong, data-responsible ecosystemAs the world’s most populous country, India’s healthcare system faces high hurdles. The government’s newly enacted data privacy law sets rigorous requirements and levies hefty penalties on violations. AI expert and technical writer Priya Dialani breaks down the details.
Air Canvas using Python libraries reveals much about art in the digital age
In the current digital age of advanced tech, the boundaries between art, science, and technology are increasingly blurring. Researcher Parisa Naraei describes a project exploring the concept of computer vision and its workings, with various intriguing applications.
Humanity must navigate a future of freedom versus control in the age of AI
As the AI epoch advances, humans face a stark choice and must seek to strike the right balance between freedom and control by the entrenched Big Tech elites, counsels Bart de Witte, an expert on digital transformation in healthcare and founder of Berlin-based non-profit HIPPO AI.
Far from being amazing, Sora seems unable to handle the truth
Sora, a text-to-video and text-to-image AI model from OpenAI, is known for creating realistic scenes. A closer look, however, reveals that many of these are not real and should not be mistaken for such, warns Gary Marcus, a best-selling AI author, entrepreneur, and professor.
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.
Brain science
Stay tuned for The Yuan’s brain science themed webinar this July!
The Yuan recently ran a three-week series of articles from April 1 to April 19, with topics examining the intersection of neuroscience and AI. The series was a great success and will be followed up in July by a webinar featuring some of the series’ outstanding contributors.
Brain science
Neurosymbolic AI injects symbolic reasoning to give DL ‘the human touch’
Neurosymbolic AI is a novel method that empowers DL to reason symbolically, while also bolstering its already renowned ability to ingest and digest reams of data. SEO content creator Ava Addams maps a new route toward more intuitive AI, and forecasts a sea change in the offing.
Brain science
Advantis Medical Imaging fuels innovation to redefine healthcare with AI
The Yuan recently spoke with Zoi Giavri, co-founder, president and chief product officer of leading medical software developer Advantis Medical Imaging to talk advances in healthcare. Eleni Natsi, a journalist focused on the transformative impact of AI, lets us in on their tête-à-tête.
Brain science
GenAI offers a peek into the future of empathetic care in neuropsychiatry
Neuropsychiatric disorders are often difficult to treat because each patient’s case is unique and there are few, if any, other comparable cases to use as references. Fortunately, GenAI, a new tech, is now changing this outlook, argues Harvard Med Fellow Rohitashva Agrawal, MD,MPH.
Optimization
Data, infrastructure barriers hamper AI's cure of Africa's healthcare woes
Africa will gain the most from AI’s activation in healthcare, but the road to fulfilling this vision is a rocky one. Fulbright Scholar Ahmed Zahlan, who is pursuing his PhD in AI healthcare startups, charts the path the second most populous continent must take to reach this goal.
Optimization
AI’s impact on the music business is great, but greatly underappreciated
Many people are au courant with the transformative effect AI is having on the healthcare, banking, and robotics industries, but far fewer are aware of its splash in the realm of music. AI expert Snigdha Bose probes this stealth phenomenon and signals its future import.
Optimization
Google shelved its Gemini AI image app after it tried to rewrite history
Google put the brakes on its Gemini AI image tool for generating “inaccurate images of historical figures.” An attempt to avoid reproducing toxic stereotypes - a common issue with image generation tools - led Gemini to commit the even worse offense of writing revisionist history.
Optimization
Brazilian AI takes up eyeglass prescription prediction to boost vision care
Nearsightedness and other vision impairments afflict victims everywhere and their early detection is paramount. A new Brazilian AI bids fair to succor via tele-eye exams those who lack access to care. Medical executive and radiologist Gustavo Meirelles makes it all crystal clear.
Governance
How a public-private consortium could lead to democratic global AI governance
An open and democratic public-private consortium for AI would sustain growth, transparency, and competition, while averting an over-concentration of power and AI safety risks, argues Trustless Computing Association founder and President Rufo Guerreschi.
Governance
There is a strong case to be made for regulating GenAI through common law
Arguments over whose regulations are best regarding AI, LLMs, and other advance tech overlook the possibility that common law, with its case-by-case approach, offers the best solution for crafting sensible regulatory frameworks, argue profs S. Alex Yang and Angela Huyue Zhang.
Governance
UK and US AI regulatory frameworks precede AI safety summit, impact healthcare
Both the UK and US governments published AI regulatory frameworks ahead of the first-ever AI Safety Summit hosted at Bletchley Park in November 2023. The two frameworks are both organized by five similar principles, and by comparing them AI developers will be better equipped to create AI tools designed for use in both UK and US settings.
Governance
AI tops the charts at Davos 2024 as The Yuan makes its grand entrance
The WEF now underway in Davos, Switzerland is bringing together household names from business, tech, government, and academia, with AI clearly in the ascendant for the first time. Three of The Yuan’s top contributors are also showing our flag at this year’s gala event.
Cognition
Looking ahead, OpenAI’s got 9.9 problems, and Twitch ain’t one
While late 2022 and 2023 were heady times for ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, the AI darling faces many serious challenges in 2024 as its momentum slows and cracks in its business model become more apparent, argues best-selling AI author, entrepreneur, and professor Gary Marcus.
Cognition
Q-learning strategies optimize healthcare decision-making, asset deployment
The Q-learning technique is an ML approach that allows AI algorithms to learn and improve over time. This self-learning has many applications, from finance to healthcare, and promises significant improvement in how AI and ML operate. AI engineer Douglas Amante shows us the ropes.
Cognition
A comparison reveals the stark contrast between AI, human stupidity
This year’s World Economic Forum offered a snapshot on the state of the world and its many ongoing crises. While AI is achieving impressive results in many ways, these are largely being overshadowed by human stupidity, cautions NYU Professor Emeritus of Economics Nouriel Roubini.
Cognition
Meaningful and impactful AI ethics requires an adaptive mindset
The second part of this series elaborates further on the Agile Leadership Framework™ and Strategic Hustler™ concepts introduced in the previous article, writes Dr Frank Lee Harper, Jr, AI thought leader and provost and vice chancellor at Cambridge Corporate University.
Post-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.
Post-pandemic
Lessons learned during the pandemic must never be forgotten
As the COVID-19 pandemic fades into the past, people are eager to put it behind them and move on with their lives. However, the lessons taught by the pandemic must be remembered to prevent such a disaster from happening again.
Post-pandemic
Deep learning is a great tool for automatically detecting COVID-19
Intelligent methods help medical professionals detect and diagnose COVID-19 more quickly and so expedite treatment for patients suffering from severe cases, as ear, nose, and throat specialist Dr Mehrnaz Ataei and genetic and healthcare ML developer Dr Sara Moein succinctly explain.
Post-pandemic
A viable path out of the pandemic is crucial
Most people now act as if COVID-19 is over, yet the virus remains active and dangerous. The limited ability of current vaccines and drugs to prevent infection or treat long-COVID means much more must be done before the threat posed by this pathogen is truly a thing of the past.
Delta dialog
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Special reports
The synergy of humans and AI: Nurturing humanity in the age of innovation
Crossing from the Old World that launched the Age of Exploration to the New World that bore its brunt, our voyage of intelligent discovery lands on day five on the shores of Brazil, named for a tree yielding a dye as red as embers (brasas) so precious Portugal’s bandeirantes eagerly shed the equally carmine blood of the area’s indigenes to obtain the colorant, before these bannermen mixed their own with them and others to produce Brazil’s largely Pardo people. On day five of our quest, radiologist Gustavo Meirelles takes the helm in the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest city to relate how other historic advancements that aroused dire fears at the start were ultimately also fully incorporated into human society.
The Yuan AI 2023: A year when health innovation is set to mature and consolidate
As 2023 gets underway, AI-related innovation in health tech companies is likely to be as affected by war, inflation, energy shortages, and available funding as by tech advances. Consolidation is likely, which may reduce competition, though even if trendy startups and eye-catching but risky ventures struggle, ‘boring’ innovation that often flies under the radar will continue to rack up successes. Harvard fellow Dr Rohitashva Agrawal explains.
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.
Is Microsoft’s big bet on OpenAI a slam dunk or long shot?
Amid the razzmatazz surrounding ChatGPT, several big players like Microsoft are wagering on this and other promising AI tech. This is risky but not necessarily foolhardy. The coming months will show whether these investments prove wise, says best-selling AI author, entrepreneur, and NYU Prof Gary Marcus.
AI will never outwit humans because it is no ‘smarter’ than an abacus is
Ancient Greeks used a marked table - abax - to calculate, but the true ‘abacus’ is a 5,000-year-old Babylonian invention diffused to the rest of the world. On day 13 of our intelligent discovery quest, writing from the East-West trade hub of Mumbai, The Yuan columnist Satyen K. Bordoloi likens seeing smartness in AI to ascribing sentience to an abacus.
AI, ML, Big Data supercharge drug discovery, development - Part 2
AI and associated technologies are taking the drug discovery sector by storm by shifting it into warp drive. Technology writer Priya Dialani, host of The Yuan’s Delta Dialog podcast, showcases inspiring examples of intrepid pioneers applying AI and supercharging drug development.
PODCAST: DELTA
DIALOG
DIALOG