AI and COVID-19

In a time of public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic, one may wonder why bother discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI). This article is not about pushing the relevance of AI but to outline how it is making a meaningful contribution to the fight against the pandemic. The role of AI goes back to the very beginning of the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. BlueDot, a Canadian AI platform, was one of the first entities in the world to identify an unusual cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan and signal to the world the possibility of an outbreak. This alert came way before any international health authorities issued a warning.