General Intelligence

UN Warns Most A.I. Isn’t Ready to Fight the Coronavirus

Plus an algorithm that can teach robots soccer, and a facial recognition hack that makes you look like Mr. Bean

Dave Gershgorn
OneZero
Published in
3 min readMar 27, 2020

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A doctor at West China Hospital of Sichuan University introduces a scan-reading artificial intelligence system on March 13, 2020. Photo: China News Service/Getty Images

Welcome to General Intelligence, your weekly dive into the A.I. news and research that matters.

MMachine learning researchers around the world are racing to apply their skills, from computer vision to natural language processing, to tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

But a new report from the United Nations’ artificial intelligence initiative, Global Pulse; the World Health Organization; and the Mila Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute warns that there’s far more work to be done before A.I. can have a meaningful impact on the situation.

“We note that very few of the reviewed systems have operational maturity at this stage,” the report says. “In order to operationalize this research, it is important to define a research road map and a funnel for A.I. applications to understand how this technology can immediately assist with the response, how it might help later on in the evolution of the current pandemic, and how it can be used to combat future pandemics.”

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Dave Gershgorn
OneZero

Senior Writer at OneZero covering surveillance, facial recognition, DIY tech, and artificial intelligence. Previously: Qz, PopSci, and NYTimes.