The new coronavirus is now officially a pandemic, and researchers are speeding to discover, test and deploy a vaccine. Some are hoping that breakthrough biotechnology and artificial intelligence can get us there faster. Much of the funding and development of a COVID-19 vaccine is likely to happen privately. The $8 billion coronavirus funding bill passed by the U.S. government includes just $800 million for the National Institutes of Health, where official U.S. vaccine research and development happens, but which is chronically underfunded. I asked Michael Greeley, co-founder and general partner with biotech investment fund Flare Capital in Boston, what uses AI could have in dealing with coronavirus.

The basis of GDPR is the privacy of data for citizens and consumers of EU countries and the methods needed to track and enforce GDPR will need to have intelligent methods to process the large amount of data that will need to be sorted to identify GDPR compliance or non-compliance. According to Dr. Shane Archiquette, CTO – Global Communications, Media & Entertainment, Global Markets and Technology Architecture, AI-assisted auditing will most likely be the method used to look for patterns across multiple disparate datasets that businesses will need to produce and process. In addition, AI will provide a composable method to machine-learn new areas that are identified by GDPR legal precedence as new cases are opened and closed. According to a recent report, European Union Institute researchers created AI-enabled software to scrutinize the privacy policies of 14 major technology companies for violations of the new GDPR. They found that 1/3 rd of the clauses contained "insufficient information," with 11% of the policies' sentences using "unclear language."