As the world grapples with COVID-19, every ounce of technological innovation and ingenuity harnessed to fight this pandemic brings us one step closer to overcoming it. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are playing a key role in better understanding and addressing the COVID-19 crisis. Machine learning technology enables computers to mimic human intelligence and ingest large volumes of data to quickly identify patterns and insights.

In the fight against COVID-19, organizations have been quick to apply their machine learning expertise in several areas: scaling customer communications, understanding how COVID-19 spreads, and speeding up research and treatment.

Enabling organizations to scale and adjust

Every kind of organization, whether small or large, public or private, is finding new ways to operate effectively and to meet the needs of their customers and employees as social distancing and quarantine measures remain in place. Machine learning technology is playing an important role in enabling that shift by providing the tools to support remote communication, enable telemedicine, and protect food security.

For healthcare and government institutions, that includes using machine learning-enabled chatbots for contactless screening of COVID-19 symptoms and to answer questions from the public. One example is Clevy.io, a French start-up and AWS customer, which has launched a chatbot to make it easier for people to find official government communications about COVID-19. Powered by real-time information from the French government and the World Health Organization, the chatbot assesses known symptoms and answers questions about government policies. With almost 3 million messages sent to-date, this chatbot is able to answer questions on everything from exercise to an evaluation of COVID-19 risks, without further straining the resources of healthcare and government institutions. French cities including Strasbourg, Orléans and Nanterre are using the chatbot to decentralize the distribution of accurate, verified information.

Source: www.weforum.org