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Can AI deliver long-awaited breakthroughs in assessing stroke risk?
By Rohitashva Agrawal | Mar 28, 2024
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.
Lawyers using AI almost sounds like a joke, but arouses growing concerns
US lawyers are increasingly landing in hot water for using GenAI in their practice. Attorney, professor, and AI expert Eran Kahana examines the reasons for this, the lessons to be learned, and the impacts it exerts on ethics, malpractice, and professional responsibility.
Rapid rise of CRISPR gene editing is revolutionizing a myriad of fields
CRISPR is a keen gene editing and engineering tool that won its discoverers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. While undoubtedly upending this field, its uses do not stop there. Academy of Applied Pharmaceutical Sciences researcher Shipra Asthana gives an overview of its applications.
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.
The Yuan contributor Ivana Bartoletti vows women’s rights in AI at UN
The Yuan’s contributor Ivana Bartoletti yesterday told the UN Women Assembly that, as AI increasingly fuels our societies, stronger links between privacy and equality must tackle the widening digital divide. The UN passed the first global AI resolution the same day. Her speech appears below.
5G-driven AI, ML forecast traffic snarls within an ever-expanding range
AI, ML, and 5G are allying to achieve breakthroughs in traffic pattern management, easing congestion, and making highways everywhere safer, smarter, and more efficient. Purva Joshi, a PhD candidate in Healthtech at the University of Pisa, gives the green light to future mobility.
Far from being amazing, Sora seems unable to handle the truthSora, 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.
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.
The Yuan announces new ‘brainstorming’ series exploring neuroscience, AI
As humanity teeters on the brink, fears mount over the cognitive powers of the aging global leaders on whose shoulders rests the task of averting human extinction. This moment is thus opportune for The Yuan to unveil our new brain science series, starting on April 1, to catalog its interplay with AI.
AI activates neuroscience to map the brain’s terra incognita
One of the most consequential developments taking place today is the AI-driven transformation of neuroscience, which is helping medical professionals uncover new insights and discover more about neural structures and the brain, as Harvard Med Fellow Rohit Agrawal, MD, elaborates.
Mental healthcare is in the midst of an AI-induced metamorphosis
AI is upending mental healthcare - from prevention and diagnosis to treatment and management - particularly among youngsters. Cambridge University Science Communicator Simone Castello, a former BBC journalist, ticks off the apps and their makers that are ringing in these changes.
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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.
Optimization
A trek to an indigenous land teaches digital health, sustainability lessons
Set in a national park in Brazil’s central Mato Grosso state, Alto Xingu is home to a variety of indigenous peoples. Its very remoteness imparts invaluable lessons on digital health and sustainability. Radiologist and medical executive Dr Gustavo Meirelles guides us on this tour.
Optimization
BERT-based humor generation system displays another side to AI
Humor is one of the most essential parts of human interaction, but humor generation as a sub-field of natural language generation is notoriously difficult. AI researcher and tech expert Parisa Naraei describes how a joke generator is being built to overcome this challenge.
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
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.
Cognition
AI brings disconcerting change. Beware the “weaponised nostalgia” of populism
The populism that has recently surged can be summarised as ‘weaponized nostalgia.’ Best-selling AI author, keynote speaker and London Futurist Podcast co-host Calum Chace cites historical examples to warn of the perils that demagogues will pose in the age of AI.
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
Rapid rise of CRISPR gene editing is revolutionizing a myriad of fields
CRISPR is a keen gene editing and engineering tool that won its discoverers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. While undoubtedly upending this field, its uses do not stop there. Academy of Applied Pharmaceutical Sciences researcher Shipra Asthana gives an overview of its applications.
Game-changers
Infotainment systems for voice-controlled cars represent a big step forward
Alexa and Siri are well-known voice assistants but deliver mixed results. Similar technology is now going a step further to create smarter car infotainment systems, with AI researcher and tech expert Parisa Naraei shedding light on the specific methodology involved.
Game-changers
Vision Pro realizes Steve Jobs' last vision, but Apple does not yet see it
If Steve Jobs were still alive, Apple Vision Pro would have come out earlier and featured AI at its core, writes award-winning tech columnist Satyen K. Bordoloi as he outlines a vision for AVP that Apple would do well to adapt.
Game-changers
The AI revolution is creating new possibilities in climate science
AI is transforming the world’s weather forecasting systems, helping scientists better understand Earth and giving them access to new tools for the world’s fight against climate change, says Giulio Boccaletti, Scientific Director of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.
Emerging markets
Market power is permanent even with intense technological competition
Contrary to what one might think, the competition and ceaseless innovation that are hallmarks of today’s globalized, digital, hyperconnected world are actually increasing and entrenching market power for large, established players, argues Stanford economics prof Mordecai Kurz.
Emerging markets
AI octopus flexes its tentacles to entrench Big Tech’s hegemony
No end looms in sight to Big Tech companies’ chokehold on the digital economy, and AI’s steady rise bids fair to buttress this trend based on these corporate leviathans’ access to data and knowledge of consumer and business behavior, argues author and Law Prof Eric Posner.
Emerging markets
AI roots out corruption in India’s troubled healthcare terrain
India, the world’s most populous country, has a complex healthcare system prone to inefficiency and corruption. As the country digitalizes, AI is already bearing fruit by exposing graft and granting more Indians access to quality care, writes AI and Big Data expert Disha Ganguli.
Emerging markets
Norway’s billion-kroner investment in AI should target innovation
To get the most bang for one’s buck - or krone - means carefully choosing how AI funds are allocated. Innovation Prof Tor W. Andreassen of NHH Norwegian School of Economics and tech executive Yngvar Ugland discuss the pros and cons of prioritizing AI inventions vs. innovations.
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Special reports
Nine questions about ‘The Death of Death’
“It is sweet and proper to die,” declared Roman poet Horace. Here with a very different take on that proposition comes The Yuan contributor David Wood, who argues in a new co-authored book The Death of Death that mortality is by no means a biologically foreordained inevitability.
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.
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.
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 3
The first two parts of this three-part series describe PAI assistants and how ChatGPT’s rise reflects the popular desire for them. In this final part, award-winning tech columnist Satyen K. Bordoloi examines how such a system might function in daily life.
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.
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