Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Hundreds Of Covid-Catching AI Tools - None Help
In her 1950 short story Contagion, Katherine MacLean described an elaborate system to protect a ship full of space explorers from plagues that might be brought back from alien planets:
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Interestingly, this elaborate system... didn't quite work. (You can find a link to read it online if you like.)
In response to Covid, hundreds of artificial intelligence tools were developed to diagnose patients or predict the course of their illness. None of them worked, either.
That’s the damning conclusion of multiple studies published in the last few months. In June, the Turing Institute, the UK’s national center for data science and AI, put out a report summing up discussions at a series of workshops it held in late 2020. The clear consensus was that AI tools had made little, if any, impact in the fight against covid...
... large review carried out by Derek Driggs, a machine-learning researcher at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues, and published in Nature Machine Intelligence. This team zoomed in on deep-learning models for diagnosing covid and predicting patient risk from medical images, such as chest x-rays and chest computer tomography (CT) scans. They looked at 415 published tools and, like Wynants and her colleagues, concluded that none were fit for clinical use.
“This pandemic was a big test for AI and medicine,” says Driggs, who is himself working on a machine-learning tool to help doctors during the pandemic. “It would have gone a long way to getting the public on our side,” he says. “But I don’t think we passed that test.”
(Via TechnologyReview.)
Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
(Contagion by Katherine MacLean)
In the end, many hundreds of predictive tools were developed. None of them made a real difference, and some were potentially harmful.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/23/2021)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")
Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.' - Anne McCaffrey, 1990.
AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.' - Isaac Asimov, 1958.
Fine-Tune Your Infinite Book The Way You Want It
'I squatted down beside the roller and tried to make some sense out of the knobs. There were thirty-nine of them...' - Clifford Simak, 1957.
Stargate $500 Billion Investment in Artificial Intelligence
'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.' - Edmond Hamilton, 1951.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Huawei Pura X Folding Phattie Phone
Why can't we get more innovative phone configurations?
Sleep Pods At Daxing International Airport
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
Robot Baristas Learn Their Trade Without Paying Royalties
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
JAXA Int Ball 2 Coming Right Along As Star Wars Remote
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
Robot Bricklayer Or Passer-By Bricklayer?
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
Robot Gas Station Attendant Pumps Gas For You
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
Engineer Creates Crazy Motorized Track Hospital Bed
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
Tiny Flying Robot Weighs Just One Gram
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
Some Ringworld Configurations Are Stable
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
TRANSFORM Dynamic Furniture Concept Becomes What You Need
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Darpa 'Defiant' Unmanned Autonomous Ship
'There was no wheel, and no steersman!'
What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots?
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
