What have I learned that might be helpful in preparing aspiring computer scientists to lead impactful and meaningful professional lives?

Scientists have developed a new machine learning tool that can identify Covid-19-related conspiracy theories on social media and predict how they evolved over time, an advance which may lead to better ways for public health officials to fight misinformation online. The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, analysed anonymised Twitter data to characterise four Covid-19 conspiracy theory themes – such as one that erroneously claims the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation engineered or has malicious intent related to the pandemic. Using the AI tool's analysis of more than 1.8 million tweets that contained Covid-19 keywords, the scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US categorised the posts as misinformation or not, and provided context for each of these conspiracy theories through the first five months of the pandemic. "From this body of data, we identified subsets that matched the four conspiracy theories using pattern filtering, and hand labeled several hundred tweets in each conspiracy theory category to construct training sets," explained Dax Gerts, a computer scientist and co-author of the study from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The four major themes examined in the study were that 5G cell towers spread the virus; that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation engineered or have "malicious intent" related to Covid-19; that the novel coronavirus was bioengineered or was developed in a laboratory; and that vaccines for Covid-19, which were still in development during the study period, would be dangerous.

An artificial intelligence-enabled synthetic data generator that converts clinical data of any kind into equivalent, mock versions that don't expose sensitive patient-identifying details is being put to use as a component of the National Institutes of Health-steered National COVID Cohort Collaborative, or N3C effort. "The NIH's N3C initiative is a result of the urgent need for understanding of COVID both to develop better patient care and understand the impacts on individuals and the health system as a whole," Dr. Michael D. Lesh told Nextgov this week. Lesh--the co-founder and CEO of Syntegra, the company behind the synthetic data engine--shed light on how the tool works, and a new partnership between the business, NIH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that underpins this fresh endeavor. In June 2020, not long after the novel coronavirus pandemic disrupted nearly every aspect of American life, NIH launched N3C to accelerate COVID-19 research and new medical breakthroughs. The collaborative pursuit, according to a June press release, intends to systematically capture relevant data from participating health care providers across the country, aggregate that data into accessible formats, and in-turn help approved users harness research insights from that harmonized information, via the NCATS N3C Data Enclave.

We all have to read this - just to see how many different ways there are to solve the same problem. It's the world's biggest experiment on #AIineducation, and no one can predict the outcome. Silicon Valley is also keenly interested. In a report in March, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation identified AI as an educational tool worthy of investment. China is undergoing the largest-scale experiment on artificial intelligence in education. Here's what's happening and how it could shape the rest of the world.

Artifical Intelligence (AI), in the form of IBM Watson, is being used to aid decision making in public health supply chains in developing countries and improve patients' access to life-saving medicines. Photo: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation"Today's AI technology offers the solution, allowing us to leverage cognitive capabilities to create a transparent, intelligent and predictive supply chain. We asked ourselves what could be achieved if we could get IBM Watson to place chatbots on the platforms available to health workers in African supply chains, so that people can improve their learning." An AI powered chatbot can deliver personalised learning on mobile devices to enhance the supply chain skills of the health workers that staff most African healthcare supply chains," says Deborah Dull, representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "What if, through the AI, health workers could know where specific products are in the country?