What Advancements Can We Expect From Artificial Intelligence In The Near Future?

Ever since the Future Trends Forum discussed Artificial Intelligence, this technology has become the cornerstone to develop and digitalize the main economic sectors, and an essential tool in our day-to-day, as it plays a key role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Therefore, the Bankinter Innovation Foundation is holding the webinars Living with Artificial Intelligence, where our experts will talk about the tangible impact of living with artificial intelligence.

Nuria Oliver, chief data scientist at the Data-Pop Alliance and Pilar Manchón, Senior Director of Research Strategy at Google are two women at the forefront of artificial intelligence. In our first webinar, they have shared the progress in the field.

Nuria Oliver focused her efforts in the fight against Corvid 19 in using data science.

In her capacity as Commissioner for the President of the Valencian region on Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Data Science to Fight COVID-19, Nuria has been working since last March, sharing her 10+ years of expertise applying data science and big data against infectious diseases, coordinating a multi-disciplinary group of experts to support data-driven policy making against COVID-19.

These are the four lines of action Nuria is working on in this context:

1. Studying citizen mobility with anonymous data provided by telco operators.

2. Epidemiological models that enable forecasting the pandemic.

3. Forecasting models to detect the likelihood of new outbreaks, for example.

4. A citizen survey, which among others, enables determining the emotional state of mind of the population and how their habits have changed.

With all this, the team can synthesize scenarios and evidence that is then shared with policymakers, so that they can take the best decisions. As of today, the focus is on applications to determine testing efforts and contact tracing of positive cases. An inspiring example of collaboration and cooperation between citizens, civil society experts and public administrations, all working for the common good.

In her remarks, Pilar Manchón, senior director of research strategy at Google AI,  highlighted the significance of machine learning, she called it the next era in artificial intelligence.

This type of systems enables autonomous problem-solving, independently from preset rules. Based on the input data and certain algorithms, these systems can learn on their own.

Since 2016, machine learning systems are more successful than human beings at certain tasks, such as looking for an object within an image.

Google applies artificial intelligence in two great areas:

1. It provides increasingly useful and convenient information to users.

2. Thanks to tools such as TensorFlow, Google enables everyone to create machine learning applications using cloud computing.

Google Translate, to translate text from images or videos, and Google Photos—which runs the reverse process: starting from natural language, it looks for photos or videos following a certain theme—are just two examples of machine learning applications offered by Google. At present 20% of searches on Google’s search engine are voice searches.

Google Duplex may be the most advanced machine learning application in human-machine interfaces. It enables over-the-phone conversations in natural language to carry out tasks such as booking a table at a restaurant. 

Beyond the scope of the core business of the company, one may mention healthcare applications such as detecting cardiovascular problems through the retina, diagnosing cancer, and designing new drugs. In social and environmental sustainability, there are examples such as plague detection, energy efficiency, and traffic management.

Where is artificial intelligence headed? Pilar believes we will experience great strides forward in multi modal machine-human interfaces. Another huge trend is democratizing artificial intelligence: that anyone, without the knowledge or the investment in the equipment, can develop AI applications.

In conclusion, much along the same line as Nuria, Pilar predicts that great advancements will result from multi-disciplinary cooperation; one case in point being the Cross Innovation Strategy Group promoted by NASA.

If you want to understand in-depth the artificial intelligence fundamentals and its many applications, feel free to check out the analysis made by the Future Trends Forum experts here.