This week, I've been working on a piece about an AI-based tool that could help guide end-of-life care. We're talking about the kinds of life-and-death decisions that come up for very unwell people. Often, the patient isn't able to make these decisions--instead, the task falls to a surrogate. It can be an extremely difficult and distressing experience. A group of ethicists have an idea for an AI tool that they believe could help make things easier.

Researchers may have developed a new tool that uses machine learning to better predict health outcomes for hospitalized Covid patients, and help physicians make more informed treatment decisions. A German research team from Charity-University Medicine in Berlin – one of the country's largest university hospitals – developed an Artificial Intelligence tool that can estimate how well an infected person will fare based off of a blood sample. The levels of fourteen proteins found in a person's blood can indicate whether a person who suffers a severe enough hospitalization will survive or die from the virus, and the tool developed by researchers can accurately asses their risk. In times of crisis, where resources are especially scarce, the tool can help determine what patients require the most intensive care to survive, and who is more fit to fight off the virus themselves. Using blood samples from Covid patients, a German research team has found that levels of 14 proteins can help determine whether a person survives the virus.

Artificial intelligence might arguably be the newest frontier of human experience, but there's no denying that man has been fascinated with the concept for millennia. From the mythical stories of Hephaestus creating mechanical servants and brazen-footed bulls that puffed fire from their mouths, to the talking heads of the 13th century, to IBM Watson and modern forms of AI, the subject has been bubbling on the surface of human consciousness. The time is now here for AI to come of age; and, in many ways, it already has. But now there's a new problem, and it's not one of how AI can be implemented, as has been the major challenge in the past. AI has now sprouted into a plethora of forms, each rivaling the other in an attempt to showcase its superior capabilities.

An end-of-life chatbot that helps terminally ill patients struggling with tough decisions is being tested by researchers. The tablet-based bot can help guide people near the end of their lives through a number of difficult issues, including funeral plans, wills and spiritual questions. The experts behind the technology say it was created to help people have important conversations before it's too late. An end-of-life chatbot that helps terminally ill patients struggling with tough decisions is being tested by researchers. The chatbot was designed by a team of doctors, hospital chaplains and scientists for people within a year of the end of their life.