Coronavirus concerns continue to escalate this week as Austria and Switzerland close their borders to ItalyIraq shuts its borders to Iran with over 50 deaths reported in 10 days; and the South Korean outbreaks starts to appear similar to Wuhan’s outbreak in January.

Donald Trump of the United States has touched down in India to build trade relations, and the AI arms race continues to accelerate between the United States and China.

All this and more in this week’s AI Update.

How can AI implementation be compared to AI adoption?

White House Expands AI Budget

How much funding is required for AI research? That is the question voters are asking as the White House released their 2021 fiscal year budget which despite boosting AI allocation from $50M-$249M, the budget also slashed the research fund. AI cannot improve without research, and these budget changes have sparked controversy and disagreement on the government’s stance for technology.

Cybersecurity Threat Increases

Estimates show an estimated 4.1 billion records were breached in 2019 alone with 62% of business experiencing phishing attacks in 2018. Businesses and individuals have no choice but to invest more in cyber threat managementCybersecurity investments may exceed $133.7B by 2022 as consumers demand increased privacy, digital trust, and digital security.

Is an AI Winter coming?

Not according to Gary Marcus — yet.

Gary Marcus tweets about potential reasons why the next AI winter may occur soon.

Researchers remember the 1990s AI winter, but scientists are not certain yet when is the next AI winter.

Skeptics believe that AI will fail — biased data, automation of human jobs, and black box models encourage skeptics to bet against the AI revolution.

Experts claim that AI could hit the wall soon.

Yann LeCun tweets in reaction to Gary Marcus on the next AI winter

How can researchers overcome the limitations of AI? What programming packages or software will be developed to support researchers to build fair, responsible, ethical, and explainable AI models? I argue that research funds could be increased by the government.

I argue that research funds could be increased by the government

Visits by world leaders such as Trump to India will be more actionable this time around.

President Donald Trump tweets his visit to India in February 2020

The Decade of AI

The debate on the arms race between China and the United States keeps growing as both countries scale AI their way. For example, China could beleading the race with the country adopting AI solutions in every facet of their society including classrooms, manufacturing and facial recognition.

On the other hand, the US is focused mostly on responsible AI but not at the same level with China. How should AI implementation take place in the midst of this arms race?

On the other hand, the US is focused mostly on responsible AI, but not at the same level with China

Leveraging AI Capabilities

Companies are using AI to achieve lift with customer sales, to improve customer retention, and to develop product innovation. JP Morgan recently developed an advertisement by an AI and compared the results to ads developed by humans. Over 60% of executives in marketing consider that AI could support with data management.

AI for Vaccine and Immune systems

Development of immune systems for patients is critical with deadly outbreaks such as the coronavirus. From face masks and exclusive testing by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), to required approval for policy changes for quarantines on military bases in the United States, the coronavirus is causing a breakdown between society and government.

AI may help develop a cure or vaccine for coronavirus soon, but so could scientific researchers in government-funded labs.

AI systems and machine learning could lower research costs associated with development of vaccines

AI infusing Automation

The automation speed from AI has increased since its first exposure to the world such as during the Robocup competition in Japan organized by Hiroaki Kitano. Times have changed and now AI is becoming a central part of every technology. Sony is one company investing in AI technology with the area headed by research scientist Kitano who leads the AI team. From autonomous cars to smart cameras, AI is adding much value to humans. AI therefore presents the best opportunity for automation procedures to take effect on every technology.

From autonomous cars to smart cameras, AI is adding much value to humans

AutoFlip from Google

The end of annoying videos is here as Google launched AutoFlip, an AI solution that customizes each video depending on the device used. From detection of the shot, to analysis of video content and changing the framing of the video, AutoFlip is a machine learning application that compares different frames and understands changes in color and video specifics. Besides this, AutoFlip utilizes neural networks that differentiate objects and is widely used in ads.

From detection of the shot, to analysis of video content and changing the framing of the video, AutoFlip is a machine learning application that compares different frames and understands changes in color and video specifics.

AI is conducting Interviews

Unlike human agents who take a long time to interview candidates, the adoption of AI in recruitment means that companies have an easy time given the accuracy from AI. For example, AI based hiring is used in South Korea and the United States but skeptics fear that it could complicate the bias problem already seen from AI applications. Emotion recognition is coming of age with analysts forecasting a market valuation of $25B in 3 years.

Safeguarding from Heart Attacks and Strokes by AI

AI is being adopted widely in health care, as doctors prefer the technology to assess scans compared to humans. By taking large data volumes and reviewing them, AI is able to detect cancerous growth cells with more precision and the same applies to tracking blood flow in veins to measure possibility of a heart attack. From the CMR imaging technology to AI, it is clear that technology is transforming health care and increasing quality of patient care.

Artificial Intelligence impact on jobs

Everybody knows that AI and robots will eventually take over Human Work and jobs. However, at the same time, AI could create new jobs where people assume new roles, as described by Deloitte in the Future of Super Jobs. In the book, “Alexa Is Stealing Your Job: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Your Future”, author Rhonda Scarf explains the career impacts from AI technology. As AI continues to expand and becomes a practical technology, it is clear that it will cause job disruption and job creation in the economy.

In the book “Alexa Is Stealing Your Job: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Your Future”, author Rhonda Scarf explains the career impacts from AI technology

Text summarization from FUSE Lab

Text summarization is a challenge for news websites such as Bloomberg and Reuters, given the grammatical errors that most often make reading challenging for humans — until now. Microsoft Researcher’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) lab, focuses on real-time and content-rich experiences, developed an AI system that assists researchers to figure out grammar structures and generic forums of textual data.

As we wrap things up

The building of an NLP neural network by Open AI is a step in the right direction but despite concerns about people misusing this technology, accurate training of neural nets is essential to boost training quality standards. GPT-2 is still improving and soon could be the golden source for NLP-based systems.

An audio version of this Medium article is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.