This is how AI can help in a humanitarian crisis

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is undergoing a period of massive expansion. This is not because computers have achieved human-like consciousness, but because of advances in machine learning, where computers learn from huge databases how to classify new data. At the cutting edge are the neural networks that have learned to recognise human faces or play Go. Recognising patterns in data can also be used as a predictive tool. AI is being applied to echocardiograms to predict heart disease, to workplace data to predict if employees are going to leave, and to social media feeds to detect signs of incipient depression or suicidal tendencies.