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The most important AI breakthroughs in 2020

To say that 2020 didn’t exactly go as planned would be an understatement. The Covid-19 virus required our undivided attention, whether on a personal or professional level. But now that we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we wanted to draw your attention to some of the awesome stuff that happened in the field of AI last year and which you might have missed.

OpenAI’s GPT-3

Launched by OpenAI, a San Francisco research company, which includes Elon Musk among its co-founders,  it was described by many as one of the most significant advances in the field. In short, GPT-3 is a language model that is powered by a neural network. What it’s able to do is provide an appropriate piece of text to any other text that is typed by a person. It can create a poem, write an article, and even generate code or work in SQL. You can read an article written entirely by GPT-3 here.

GPT-3 is so important for both artificial intelligence and business in general because it opens the door to a whole variety of tasks that can be taken over or improved. Whether it’s automating tasks, building entire websites or apps from scratch, or providing summaries of large documents. And this is just the beginning.

Of course, there are still many challenges pertaining to costs, issues related to how the algorithm really works, and the fact that it’s not always 100% ok in terms of output. But as a proof of concept and building block for the next wave of AI improvements and innovations, it’s up there. 

Healthcare breakthroughs

If there is one area where AI can bring the most good, healthcare is definitely one. Over the course of 2020, AI solutions have helped pave the way for the development of new medications, and they have also been used to check whether any of the existing drugs already in use can treat new diseases such as COVID-19.

In addition, Artificial Intelligence has helped doctors increase the accuracy of diagnostics and disease detection – for example, in detecting cancer or analyzing x-rays.

And we have seen the first tentative steps in using AI in the area of lifestyle management through wearables. Just this year, Fitbit received FDA clearance for an electrocardiogram application designed to detect signs of atrial fibrillation. In the future, we will most likely see wearables being used to help people manage conditions such as diabetes or cancer.

COVID-19

Ever since the COVID crisis began, AI has been at the forefront of efforts to tackle this virus. Artificial intelligence has been used to identify disease clusters, for case monitoring, pattern recognition, to predict future outbreaks, and more.

In Singapore, for example, AI-powered thermal cameras are used by healthcare providers to carry out tasks such as temperature measurements – which would have normally required a lot of people. This means that we can better allocate the workforce to where it is needed the most. AI helped doctors better screen patients’ CT Scans for Coronavirus signs, thus improving waiting times and accuracy.

And it has also played a key part in detecting patterns in the way Covid-19 spread by using news outlets, online content, and other information channels in multiple languages to provide early warnings.

Conclusions

2020 provided numerous opportunities for companies to use AI and for start-ups to begin working on artificial intelligence solutions in fields and areas which up until now would have been difficult to get into or show ROI. And we believe that this year we’ll start seeing the benefits of that increased use and development in the industry.

So how are you planning on using AI in 2021? The best way to start is by having a conversation with industry experts. Book a free 60-minute consulting session with us.

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