Is talent really equally distributed? Karim helps companies getting a grip on the latest AI advancements and implementing them. A graduate of France's Ecole Polytechnique and former Program Fellow at NYU's Courant Institute, Karim has a passion for teaching and using applied mathematics. This led him to co-found InstaDeep, an AI startup that was nominated at the MWC17 for the Top 20 global startup list made by PCMAG. Karim uses TensorFlow to develop Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning products.

Like many emergency rooms in the United Kingdom, the A&E department at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, Greater Manchester, faces high congestion. The Data Science team at the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) National Health Service (NHS) Group of hospitals is implementing support mechanisms to ease wait times, using machine learning and regression to better predict peak demand times and improve the flow of patients from intake to discharge. I recently spoke with Karim Webb, Data Science Manager and Robyn Hamilton, Data Scientist at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, regarding some exciting developments with the use of data science to ease wait times, support clinicians and provide better patient experiences at the hospital. Karim believes that his team is on the leading edge of this discipline within the UK healthcare economy. However, one of the biggest challenges the team faces is that, "… data science is still a relatively new discipline…so finding stakeholder engagement to drive it forward is a challenge."

Loneliness and isolation have long been the forbearers and sidekicks of mental illness. When social media became a fixture in everyday life, many hoped it would remedy both issues and create a more connected and healthier human existence. But the opposite has proved true. Researchers are looking at artificial intelligence (AI) as a possible way to reverse the trends of isolation and loneliness, and thus improve mental health. Where AI can't improve a feeling of connection for social media users, it might still make things better by predicting an individual's need for intervention, and even summoning assistance from friends, family, and mental health professionals when needed.

It wasn't so long ago that artificial intelligence was reserved to the realm of science fiction according to the public. Skip ahead to 1997 and IBM's Deep Blue brought real artificial intelligence into the public eye when it bested Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 2 matches(though losing the series 4-2). Fast-forward to last year and AI has beat the masters in virtually every game you can think of, including Go(which is both older and more difficult than Chess). From mastering games to contemplating the meaning of life, AI has made major strides in recent years. A fully developed, self-teaching AI unit is no longer a dream, it has transitioned into an inevitability with the only real question being "who will get their first?" There have been so many artificial intelligence breakthroughs in recent years, it can be difficult to imagine what's next.

In March of 2016, a twenty-seven-year-old Syrian refugee named Rakan Ghebar began discussing his mental health with a counsellor. Ghebar, who has lived in Beirut since 2014, lost a number of family members to the civil war in Syria and struggles with persistent nervous anxiety. Before he fled his native country, he studied English literature at Damascus University; now, in Lebanon, he works as the vice-principal at a school for displaced Syrian children, many of whom suffer from the same difficulties as he does. When Ghebar asked the counsellor for advice, he was told to try to focus intently on the present. By devoting all of his energy to whatever he was doing, the counsellor said, no matter how trivial, he could learn to direct his attention away from his fears and worries.

Sokhela has both HIV and tuberculosis -- a brutal, one-two punch that's exacerbating epidemics of both diseases in South Africa. In most places in the country, where clinics are overtaxed, this would presage a wait of up to 10 hours. But here something different is happening. Staffers at computer monitors swiftly log in people and dispatch them for triage or, if they have tuberculosis, a special area away from others. Those who only need their antiretroviral (ARV) drugs walk directly to the pharmacists, who retrieve each patient's electronic medical record and use a robotic system to pull drugs from shelves and fill orders.

X2AIX2AI founders Eugene Bann (left) and Michiel Rauws (right) intrigue school children with Karim's automatic responses at Jusoor school, located within a Syrian refugee community in Al Marj, Lebanon. According to the UN, over 3 million Syrian refugees are now in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, with millions more displaced within Syria. To help with this crisis, artificial intelligence startup X2AI is in the middle of a two week stay in Beirut, Lebanon, where it's piloting the use of artificial intelligence as a psychotherapy treatment for refugees. Partnering with Singularity University and the Field Innovation Team, X2AI is pitching the psychotherapy bot (named Karim) to aid workers and refugee communities. X2AIX2AI founder and CTO Eugene Bann watches on as a student from Jusoor school has a conversation with Karim in Arabic, and his first interaction with an AI.

In the face of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, a start-up that develops AI is to puts its technology to use as a psychological aid for refugees by having supportive conversations with them via SMS messages. In the midst of a civil war and a near-total collapse of society, millions of Syrian refugees have been fleeing their country in search of anywhere where they can live safe in the knowledge their life is not under threat, but not without great psychological stress on those involved. However, due to the sheer number of people fleeing, and the difficulty they experience in simply trying to find shelter, they are unlikely to receive any form of support for the sake of their mental health. According to The Guardian, however, a start-up that develops AI, X2AI, is to use its systems to create a chatbot called Karim, which will allow anyone with a mobile phone to have conversations with it about their experiences in Arabic. Once the conversation becomes more developed, Karim will use its natural language processors to analyse the likely emotional state of the human on the other end and react with an appropriate response or questions for the refugee.

More than 1 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since the start of the conflict and as many as one-fifth of them may be suffering from mental health disorders, according to the World Health Organisation. But Lebanon's mental health services are mostly private and the needs of refugees – who may have lost loved ones, their home, livelihood and community – are mostly going unmet. Hoping to support the efforts of overworked psychologists in the region, the Silicon Valley startup X2AI has created an artificially intelligent chatbot called Karim that can have personalised text message conversations in Arabic to help people with their emotional problems. As the user interacts with Karim, the system uses natural language processing to analyse the person's emotional state and returns appropriate comments, questions and recommendations. Related: How much should we fear the rise of artificial intelligence?