The COVID-19 crisis is inspiring all manner of loudly touted innovations aimed at leveraging AI to beat back, stamp out or otherwise contain the pandemic. Some watchers aren’t convinced the efforts are worthy of the attention they’re getting.
One such observer is Alex Engler, an expert in AI and other emerging technologies with the Brookings Institution.
Asked by tech reporter Rebecca Heilweil of Vox to describe the worst example of AI he’s heard about during the present information rush, Engler cites somebody’s claim about sensor-outfitted drones buzzing around. Evidently the idea was to use thermal imaging in search of fevers while also checking heartbeats and breathing rates.
“That’s probably the one that makes me the most concerned,” he says. “But there are different mechanisms, different ways to be concerned about this. The mortality rate predictions make me the most concerned for bias, for instance, and that’s a very different perspective on what’s potentially harmful.”
At the same time, however, he allows that not every proposed AI-based answer to the pandemic is silly.
“[I]n time, with less of an absurd turnaround period, you can see AI meaningfully help in medical imagery,” for example, Engler says. “Maybe it can tell the difference between bacterial pneumonia and the pneumonia that’s associated with Covid-19. … It’s not that these things are fundamentally impossible tasks. It’s that it’s worth approaching them with a skeptical, informed take rather than just taking the idea on its face, ‘Of course AI can do that.’”
Read the whole interview:
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.