Many governments worldwide are looking at using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other cognitive technologies as part of making their operations more efficient, better serving their citizens, and increasing the range of ways they can meet their missions. It's no surprise then that the US Government and forward thinking leadership is making investments into AI technologies. Additionally, some agencies such as the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) are also seeing how other emerging technologies such as blockchain can help. Jose Arrieta, the CIO at the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), interviewed on a recent AI Today podcast episode while he was the associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition at HHS is one such leader who sees how AI and blockchain can have a big impact at the agency. He became a program manager to build IT systems to use machine learning to analyze biographical information about people.

In a blog post and accompanying paper, researchers at Google detail an AI system -- MetNet -- that can predict precipitation up to eight hours into the future. They say that it outperforms the current state-of-the-art physics model in use by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and that it makes a prediction over the entire U.S. in seconds as opposed to an hour. It builds on previous work from Google, which entailed an AI system that ingested satellite images to produce forecasts with a roughly one-kilometer resolution and a latency of only 5-10 minutes. And while it's early days, it could the runway for a forecasting tool that could help businesses, residents, and local governments better prepare for inclement weather. MetNet takes a data-driven and physics-free approach to weather modeling, meaning it learns to approximate atmospheric physics from examples and not by incorporating prior knowledge.

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to detect Vietnam War-era bomb craters in Cambodia from satellite images – with the hope that it can help find unexploded bombs. The new method increased true bomb crater detection by more than 160 percent over standard methods. The model, combined with declassified U.S. military records, suggests that 44 to 50 percent of the bombs in the area studied may remain unexploded. As of now, attempts to find and safely remove unexploded bombs and landmines – called demining – has not been as effective as needed in Cambodia, said Erin Lin, assistant professor of political science at The Ohio State University. She cites a recent UN-commissioned report that has criticized the Cambodian national clearance agency for presenting a picture of rapid progress by focusing on areas at minimal or no risk of having unexploded mines.

In this post, we're collecting articles that detail how AI, machine learning, and data science are being used in response to the coronavirus. So far it covers predictive and monitoring systems, AI-driven diagnostics, and efforts in the data science community. We hope it will provide a comprehensive, grounded look at exactly where AI technology is being used, and how it is making a difference. In time, we hope it will also provide an overview of how AI technology was employed to understand, predict, and fight the spread of COVID-19. This post will be regularly updated as new developments are reported.

Ever wonder why virtual assistant Siri can easily tell you what the square root of 1,558 is in an instant but can't answer the question "what happens to an egg when you drop it on the ground?" Artificial intelligence (A.I.) interfaces on devices like Apple's iPhone or Amazon's Alexa often fall flat on what many people consider to be basic questions, but can be speedy and accurate in their responses to complicated math problems. That's because modern A.I. currently lacks common sense. "What people who don't work in A.I. everyday don't realize is just how primitive what we call'A.I.' is nowadays," machine-learning researcher Alan Fern of Oregon State University's College of Engineering told KOIN 6 News. "We have A.I.s that do very specialized, specific things, specific tasks, but they're not general purpose. They can't interact in general ways because they don't have the common sense that you need to do that."

UPS Flight Forward (UPSFF) is collaborating with German drone-maker Wingcopter to develop the next generation of package delivery drones for a variety of use cases in the United States and internationally. UPSFF is a subsidiary of UPS dedicated to drone delivery. UPS chose Wingcopter for its unmanned aircraft technology and its track record in delivering a variety of goods over long distances in multiple international settings. "Drone delivery is not a one-size-fits-all operation," said Bala Ganesh, vice president of the UPS Advanced Technology Group. "Our collaboration with Wingcopter helps pave the way for us to start drone delivery service in new use-cases. UPS Flight Forward is building a network of technology partners to broaden our unique capability to serve customers and extend our leadership in drone delivery."

Disinfecting robots, smart helmets, thermal camera-equipped drones and advanced facial recognition software are all being deployed in the fight against Covid-19 at the heart of the outbreak in China. President Xi Jinping has called on the country's tech sector to help battle the epidemic. Healthcare tech is also being used to identify coronavirus symptoms, find new treatments and monitor the spread of the disease, which has so far infected more than 90,000 people worldwide. But is it up to the job? Several Chinese firms have developed automated technologies for contactless delivery, spraying disinfectants and performing basic diagnostic functions, in order to minimise the risk of cross-infection.

This pandemic is the biggest "black swan" event we have witnessed in our lives so far. A black swan event is characterized by a very low probability but extremely high impact. The last one was 9/11 in the US, which some still saw coming. But Covid-19 has taken us all by surprise. Cases and deaths have had a geometric rise, which defeats understanding, because our minds tend to think in terms of linear progression.

Researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect Vietnam War-era bomb craters in Cambodia from satellite images – with the hope that it can help find unexploded bombs in near future. The new method increased true bomb crater detection by more than 160 per cent over standard methods, they said. The model, combined with declassified US military records, suggests that 44 to 50 per cent of the bombs in the area studied may remain unexploded. "As of now, attempts to find and safely remove unexploded bombs and landmines – called demining – has not been as effective as needed in Cambodia," said study researcher Erin Lin from Ohio State University in the US. For the findings, published in the journal PLOS One, the researchers started with a commercial satellite image of a 100-square-kilometre area near the town of Kampong Trabaek in Cambodia.