Welcome use of AI as force of good to combat the novel coronavirus

AS CHINA and the rest of the world struggle to contain the deadly coronavirus, now officially named Covid-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the role of technology in the fight against the pathogen cannot be over emphasised.

China has been using its well-known technological capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, analytics and drones - to name a few areas - both for containment as well as to remotely deliver services to infected citizens. For example, AI voice assistants are calling people to advise them on whether they need to quarantine themselves and what protocols to follow while robots are being used to spray disinfectants at segregated wards in hospitals to minimise the risk of infection due to human contact with the virus.

Chinese technology giants Alibaba and Baidu have offered their powerful gene-sequencing AI tools to researchers around the world who are racing to find a cure. A US-developed online tool, Healthmap, is being used to map the spread of the virus and predict where it could go next. The app trawls information from disparate online sources and combines the data to generate a map visualisation of the virus. At airports around the world, health officials are using high-tech temperature-taking equipment to screen passengers in order to isolate possible infected cases.