Tej Kohli is the founder of the not-for-profit Tej Kohli Foundation whose ‘Rebuilding You’ philosophy supports the development of scientific and technological solutions to major global health challenges whilst also making interventions to rebuild people and communities around the world. Tej Kohli is also an impact investor who backs growth-stage artificial intelligence and robotics ventures through the Kohli Ventures investment vehicle.
Twitter @MrTejKohli.
Cast your mind away, if you can, from the Coronavirus crisis and imagine that it is now 2120. The Coronavirus is a significant historical event, though it hopefully ranks a long way behind 1918’s Spanish Flu for death and destruction. However, 100 years have passed and the algorithms that now write the newspapers, script the radio and even read the TV news have been warning for a while that another major virus is due.
Suddenly, the feared biological Armageddon is again a reality. Whatever shape or form it takes, it precipitates immediate and pressing manufacturing requirements for testing diagnostics, personal protection equipment, masks and whatever else has been helpfully invented for the benefit of the human race in the preceding century.
A Brave New World
That will involve another enormous logistical effort to ensure that the right materials are produced and transported to exactly where they are needed. But, unlike in the current crisis, much of the response will be AI-enabled, actioning decisions, solving supply issues, fast-tracking new processes, repurposing manufacturing capability and co-ordinating logistics to get supplies to the point of need. The cells of the new virus will be identified automatically, with AI then providing the tools to concoct a vaccine and get it to market in super-fast time.
AI will have transformed product conception and design, factory processes and flexibility, the balance between people and robots and the interface between the universal knowledge base and how it is utilised to run the business of planet earth.
Ventilator production will be able to be ramped up with little human intervention, emergency response plans will be rolled out automatically and supermarkets will be restocking and reordering the toilet rolls before the populace has even begun to panic. Climate change will also need to have been significantly mitigated or slowed by then as well, of course.
With AI utilisation, many of the challenges outlined above should be capable of being met at the mere touch of a button, or at least a multitude of them. Think of it like an Internet-connected fridge ordering fresh milk before your existing pint runs out. On an exponentially larger scale.
From Vision to Reality
Is this really possible? I have long been stating that the global AI economy is capable of being worth more than $150 trillion in very short order, as the Internet of Things, machine learning and AI underpin and benefit every single aspect of human life, manifesting everything that is currently on the Internet.
It requires a huge leap, given that this target is nearly double the current global gross domestic product and the current crisis will clearly add to that challenge. Yet, a cursory glance of the utilisation of AI in response to the pandemic is an encouraging foretaste of the potential.
In Texas, a group of engineers has created in a matter of weeks a 3D-printable automated ventilator that offers hospitals around the world a lightning-quick way of addressing the global shortage of these life-saving devices at a fraction of the usual cost.
In Cumbria, Forth Engineering, which normally specialises in work in the nuclear, oil, gas and renewable energy sectors, is developing a disinfecting robot that is able to be controlled remotely from a safe distance to help hospitals keep areas clean during the outbreak. The robot comes with a disinfectant vapour cannon, cameras and lights and can be used to sterilise ambulances as well as hospitals, supermarkets and schools.
Managing director Mark Telford says it works in a similar fashion to a vapour cigarette, firing high pressure vapour that will disperse across a designated area. Work started on the robot at the end of March 2020 and was aiming to be complete within one week.
Producers of gin, meanwhile, have shown what could be achieved by collaboration in the spirits industry. Circumstance Distillery, based in Bristol, last year launched the world’s first gin created using an artificial intelligence programme. Meanwhile, Tappers Gin, based on the Wirral, has recently switched machinery from producing the alcoholic spirit to make much-need hand sanitisers to alleviate the shortage of the hygienic gel.
These are small beginnings but they show what is possible. It is to be hoped that many more such innovations will combine to form an AI-powered, problem-anticipating and solving infrastructure well before the next pandemic strikes. Meanwhile, some, such as those detailed above, may help with the current challenge.
Who knows? The Coronavirus may be when AI becomes of age.
