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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,833

Artificial Intelligence And Dental Insurance — It Is More Than A Focus On Radiology And Fraud

Over the years, much has been said about artificial intelligence (AI) and the healthcare industry. Much of it has been focused on two extremes. On one hand, there’s the fairly mature use of neural networks for radiological analysis. On the other, there’s the focus on fraud management. Those have become “must have’s” in my perspective. It’s filling the middle ground that interests me. Medical insurance is, as patients, providers, and payors all can agree, is often convoluted and complex. There’s a business problem in making processes more efficient, and the foolishly named robotic process automation (RPA) is only a step in the right direction. More robust AI can help all three stakeholder groups address their needs in managing medical insurance. The general medical insurance industry does deal with radiology and images. However, that’s typically in specialties. In the dental industry, radiology is a regular tool, using x-rays to understand tooth and gum conditions and then to document work that has been done. The basics of AI and radiology have been covered, in this column and many other places, so this article isn’t going to cover the concepts, it’s important to realize how important that analysis is in dental care.

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In this case, it’s increasing the accuracy and speed of dental insurance processing, resulting in better medical control, improved financial outcomes for providers and payors, and improved care and customer service for the patient.

Canada will get its first universal quantum computer from IBM

Quantum computing is still rare enough that merely installing a system in a country is a breakthrough, and IBM is taking advantage of that novelty. The company has forged a partnership with the Canadian province of Quebec to install what it says is Canada’s first universal quantum computer. The five-year deal will see IBM install a Quantum System One as part of a Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator project tackling scientific and commercial challenges.

The team-up will see IBM and the Quebec government foster microelectronics work, including progress in chip packaging thanks to an existing IBM facility in the province. The two also plan to show how quantum and classical computers can work together to address scientific challenges, and expect quantum-powered AI to help discover new medicines and materials.

IBM didn’t say exactly when it would install the quantum computer. However, it will be just the fifth Quantum One installation planned by 2023 following similar partnerships in Germany, Japan, South Korea and the US. Canada is joining a relatively exclusive club, then.

Mimicking the brain to realize ‘human-like’ virtual assistants

Speech is more than just a form of communication. A person’s voice conveys emotions and personality and is a unique trait we can recognize. Our use of speech as a primary means of communication is a key reason for the development of voice assistants in smart devices and technology. Typically, virtual assistants analyze speech and respond to queries by converting the received speech signals into a model they can understand and process to generate a valid response. However, they often have difficulty capturing and incorporating the complexities of human speech and end up sounding very unnatural.

Now, in a study published in the journal IEEE Access, Professor Masashi Unoki from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), and Dung Kim Tran, a doctoral course student at JAIST, have developed a system that can capture the information in similarly to how humans perceive speech.

“In humans, the auditory periphery converts the information contained in input speech signals into neural activity patterns (NAPs) that the brain can identify. To emulate this function, we used a matching pursuit algorithm to obtain sparse representations of speech signals, or signal representations with the minimum possible significant coefficients,” explains Prof. Unoki. “We then used psychoacoustic principles, such as the equivalent rectangular bandwidth scale, gammachirp function, and masking effects to ensure that the auditory sparse representations are similar to that of the NAPs.”

The brain’s secret to life-long learning can now come as hardware for artificial intelligence

When the human brain learns something new, it adapts. But when artificial intelligence learns something new, it tends to forget information it already learned.

As companies use more and more data to improve how AI recognizes images, learns languages and carries out other , a paper publishing in Science this week shows a way that could dynamically rewire themselves to take in new data like the brain does, helping AI to keep learning over time.

“The brains of living beings can continuously learn throughout their lifespan. We have now created an artificial platform for machines to learn throughout their lifespan,” said Shriram Ramanathan, a professor in Purdue University’s School of Materials Engineering who specializes in discovering how materials could mimic the brain to improve computing.

Captained: The European immigrants prevailed in that war, as well as in a long series of conflicts with other tribes

On this land taken from Indigenous Peoples, a new nation was eventually born, largely built by those whose ancestries traced back to the Old World via immigration and slavery.

As the country grew, inventions like the telephone, airplane, and Internet helped usher in today’s interconnected world. But the inexorable march of technological progress has come at great cost to the health of the planet, particularly because of global dependence on fossil fuels. The United Nations declared in 2017 that a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development would be held from 2021 to 2030. This Ocean Decade calls for a worldwide effort to reverse the oceans’ degradation.

The dawn of this decade, 2020, also marked the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s journey. Plymouth 400, a cultural nonprofit, has been working for more than a decade to commemorate the anniversary in ways that honor all aspects of this history, said spokesperson Brian Logan. Events began in 2020, but one of the most innovative launches is still waiting in the wings—a newfangled nautical craft, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, or MAS.

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