Rarely are conversations as important as those between a doctor and their patient. Being able to communicate often complex and distressing information in a clear and understandable manner is crucial. A recent paper from researchers at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Edinburgh and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice explores the possibility of using AI to improve the communication between doctor and patient.
"Many clinicians' communications skills aren't formerly assessed-either during school or in early practice. At the same time, there is a lot of evidence that clinicians often struggle when communicating with their patients. It's hard to improve on something when you're not being given any feedback and don't know how you're doing," the authors say.
Big Data Suggests War Might Be Lurking Around The Corner
Big data has proven remarkably effective at predicting a great many things in recent years, but perhaps one of the more maudlin examples comes via a recently published paper from the University of Florence, which used big data to predict the likelihood of war.
The researchers wanted to test the hypothesis that war is just something mankind does, it's hard-wired into us to fight one another, and therefore war should be something we can expect to occur reasonably consistently.
Do Social Media Addicts Make Riskier Decisions?
Image used with permission from Wikimedia Commons
It's fairly well known that when our mental reserves are lower, we tend to make bad decisions, but might excessive social media usage have a similar impact? That was the question posed by a recent study from Michigan State University.
Are Businesses Doing Enough to Make AI a Game Changer?
There has been no shortage of hype attached to artificial intelligence in recent years, with many a breathless tome predicting that it would transform life as we know it. One could be forgiven for thinking the latest report into AI from consultancy firm Cognizant fits neatly into that box.
After all, it reveals that some 84 percent of business leaders believe that AI will be vital to their business in the next few years. Despite this, however, few executives had much in the way of planning in place to convert this optimism into tangible change.
The Mobile App That Detects Drug Overdoses
The last few years have seen a number of mobile apps emerge that monitor your breath for signs of various diseases. It's part of a fascinating trend, the latest addition to which is a new app developed by researchers at the University of Washington, which aims to monitor your breathing for signs of a drug overdose.
The work, which was documented in a recently published paper, has resulted in an app called Second Chance, which the team claims is able to accurately spot overdose-related symptoms 90 percent of the time.
Do We Need More Diversity In Genomic Research?
Genomics has shown tremendous promise in delivering incredible breakthroughs, but these breakthroughs have been based primarily on the kind of big data sets commonly found in AI-related projects. Just as many have argued that AI is being held back by the lack of diversity in those datasets, so too does a recent paper argue that similar problems might beset genomics research.
The research shows that most people included in genetic discovery research tend to be of European descent, which can skew the outcomes of the research considerably.
Why Is Innovation Not A Corporate Priority?
Innovation is supposed to be the most valuable currency in the tech industry right now, as executives strive to cope with the volatile times we find ourselves in. The popular and business press is awash with stories of digital disruption, with an overall impression created that only the most innovative can survive.
One would imagine, therefore, that innovation is a top priority for executives the world over. Except that doesn't appear to be the case, at least not according to a recent survey from Harvard Business School, which found that just 30% of the 5,000 or so executives the researchers quizzed put innovation in their top three concerns. The survey also revealed that just 21% believe technology trends was a pressing concern as well, leaving the two metrics ranked just 5th and 7th respectively.
Using AI To Make Hearing Aids Better
Hearing loss can be debilitating and can significantly hinder the life of an individual. One of the key challenges is in distinguishing voices in noisy environments.
A Danish team believes they may have come up with a solution, with AI being deployed to both recognize and separate voices even in unknown sound environments. The work, which was documented in a recently published paper, aims to improve the ability of hearing aids to process sounds, even in unknown environments.
Improving Communication Between Us and Smart Buildings
Most of the time, humans have been living in specific accommodation, there has been little need for communication between us and our abode. As buildings become smart, however, that is beginning to change. New research from the University of Southern California (USC) highlights how the way this communication takes place has a significant impact on how we behave and, in particular, the environmental impact of our actions.
The researchers explain that we spend the vast majority of our time indoors, and that buildings account for around 40 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions pumped into the atmosphere. There is a strong desire, both from the public themselves and from legislators, for this number to be significantly reduced. Changes in how we behave could go a long way towards achieving that reduction.
New Research Highlights the Long Road Still Ahead for AI
The media has been awash with breathless prose about the capabilities of artificial intelligence in recent years. One would be forgiven for thinking that machines are practically at human levels of cognition already, or at least will be very soon.
A recent study from UCLA highlights just how far there still is to go. The study illustrated a number of quite significant limitations that the researchers believe we have to understand and improve upon before we let ourselves get carried away.
Can AI Predict If You Will Age Healthily Or Not?
As societies across the world age, the goal in healthcare has turned towards ensuring people age as healthily as possible. A recent study from Salk's Integrative Biology Laboratory suggests AI can help to predict the likelihood of that happening.
It's fairly well established that our biological and chronological ages are not always the same. Some of the factors that influence this discrepancy are also becoming better understood, with things like diet and physical activity being believed to play a part.
The Growing Importance of Data Analytics in Sport
Sport is undoubtedly one sector that has taken data analytics to heart, with the success of the Oakland Athletics so beautifully illustrated in
This has been supercharged by the increase in wearable technology that has allowed so much more data to be generated about seemingly all aspects of athletic performance. A recent special issue of features a collection of articles highlighting the impact of data on various sports.
Why The Flow Of Ideas Is Vital For An Innovation Ecosystem
Such has been the success of Silicon Valley in supporting technology startups, they have spawned countless imitators around the world, each of whom try to tap into that magic sauce. It's fair to say that few of these efforts have come close to matching the success of Silicon Valley, and a recent study from Wharton sets out to explore why that is.
The researchers focused their attention on the impact trade secrecy plays, and how the best bits of innovation are protected from prying eyes. The researchers believe this kind of activity happens even before legal protection is sought via patents. They believe that patents tend to be the focus of academic attention because they're so visible, whereas strategies for protecting trade secrets tend not to be.
Medical AI Systems Struggle to Perform Well Across IT Systems
The level of expectation surrounding AI in healthcare has reached fever pitch in recent years, with a number of pilot projects achieving positive early results. Most of these projects involved AI systems being trained on a sample dataset of medical data, such as x-rays or other medical imagery, after which the system was capable of providing early detection of various conditions.
The challenge for many of these systems is that they were usually trained on data from a single healthcare provider, with a common health IT system. A recent study highlights how when faced with data from different health systems, such AI technologies often perform much worse than doctors.
Cambridge Team Uses AI to Aid Cancer Drug Development
AI is increasingly playing a part in the drug development process, with a common use case being to deploy it to sift through vast quantities of data to find potential avenues for exploration. A similar system has recently been developed by a team from the University of Cambridge to help scientists search for cancer-related discoveries.
The system, which is known as LION LBD, has been documented in a recently published paper, takes a different approach to many such tools, in that the data if sifts through is not so much medical data as scientific literature. The researchers reason that the literature is so vast that scientists struggle to keep up with it.
How AI Can Help Solve Unsolved Crimes
The use of AI in policing to date has largely been in areas such as facial recognition and helping to deploy resources in the most effective ways, but a recent study led by Northumbria University highlights how it can also help to crack unsolved crimes, especially by providing insights into the weapons used in committing the crime.
“Machine learning uses a series of algorithms to model complex data relationships,” the authors say. “Through careful fine-tuning, these can be applied to predict important characteristics of the ammunition used in a particular shooting event from those of the respective gunshot residue (GSR) deposited on surrounding surfaces or items, such as spent cases, wounds, and, potentially, also the shooter’s hands.”
Using Big Data to Improve Forecasting
Technologies such as AI and big data have become increasingly proficient at spotting trends in large data sets. Indeed, so proficient have they become, that the University of Toronto's Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb argue that lowering the cost of prediction will be the main benefit delivered by AI in the near term.
A sign of the progress being made comes via a recent paper from researchers at the University of Cordoba, which chronicles the work they've done in producing an accurate forecasting machine. They were able to provide accurate forecasts with less data than has been used in previous models.