Post COVID-19 World, COVID-19 Accelerates AI Technologies

COVID-19 is widely spreading with more than 9.7 million cases and more than 490,000 deaths so far. There is no doubt that coronavirus will likely cause many changes in a post-COVID-19 world, the acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) is on top of these changes

Prior to COVID-19, investment in AI was already on the rise, intelligent operations using AI to transform client’s internal business and technology operations to deliver outcomes such as improved efficiency, better customer experiences, lower risk & cost, higher scale was the main driver of AI.

Despite much focus around AI, many organizations were skeptic about shifting to AI for many reasons including the availability of enough data for prediction models and how fast ROI can be realized

The Pandemic Impact

COVID-19 is imposing social distancing to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. Governments across the world have also imposed major travel restrictions to contain the virus. The travel and hospitality industry are the hardest hit due to COVID-19. COVID-19 has also put tremendous pressure on public healthcare systems and pandemic response systems across the world.

With organizations and schools across the world are taking necessary precautions for ensuring safety of everyone, there has been an expansion of tele-working, tele-education and tele-health. Remote work, study and health may impact efficiency and can increase security and infrastructure risks.

As healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public continue to take precautions against the spread of the pandemic, COVID-19 will be the triggering factor leading to the acceleration of AI.

The rise of AI during the pandemic

AI can do more than just cost savings

In this crisis, AI is a significant tool especially in the health care sector to contain the virus and treat patients and support those in need to control the outbreak and stabilize society, as a result AI investment has increased.

AI applications can be used to screen the population who are potentially infected by using AI Integrated Thermal Cameras. AI can also be used to help with diagnosis by reading CT scans for pneumonitis. This AI-enabled diagnosis solution improves diagnosis speed and reduce healthcare workers’ workload. In addition, AI algorithms and its computing power can be used to develop antibody therapies.

AI can be used to predict outbreaks by gathering and processing various data sources to predict the number of new cases that are likely to arise in an exposed population, or peak infection rates under a given set of conditions, among other outcomes

In an effort to help leverage the AI technologies to help medical and public health experts and help discover new possible treatments, many research institutions, enterprises, and White House have come together to launch the COVID-19 Public Datasets program called CORD-19. CORD-19 initiative uses AI to develop new text and data mining techniques that can help scientists answer key questions about the origins, transmissions and potential treatment of COVID-19

Post COVID-19

The Momentum will increase

COVID-19 accelerated the development of AI tools to fight the pandemic. once the crisis has passed, most of the AI tools that are developed to fight COVID-19 will stay. It is also likely that these COVID-19 use cases will inspire new ways to use AI to advance scientific. There will be positive demand and growth on AI driven use cases in the area of intelligent telehealth, cost control, virtual work culture, tele-education and smart city, process automation, self-service bots around customer care and intelligent operations.

Coming out of COVID-19, millions of users will be connected and familiar with digital tools. There will be an increasing number of businesses and consumers already using digital and cloud-based services. 5G deployment will be accelerated to provide the virtual, differentiated experiences that everyone is expecting. The combination of 5G, multi-cloud, IoT and microservices brings unique challenges to CSPs. We will see more significant investments in AI spending to keep pace and quickly launch new offerings.

In the post-COVID-19 world, as companies are coming out from recession, AI will likely become the justification for a shift in operations to achieve cost reduction. AI will enable CSPs to realize their business objectives of cost, speed and quality

There are hundreds of envisioned AI driven use cases ready to be explored with, however these use cases should be prioritized based on consumer and business value, ROI, implementation and scalability

AI-based technology combined with 5G while blended with distributed edge computing, cloud and IT functionalities are keys to drive our digital future.

CSPs must act now or risk missing opportunities