When the COVID-19 pandemic began we were all so full of hope. We assumed our technology would save us from a disease that could be stymied by such modest steps as washing our hands and wearing face masks. We were so sure that artificial intelligence would become our champion in a trial by combat with the coronavirus that we abandoned any pretense of fear the moment the curve appeared to flatten in April and May. We let our guard down.

Pundits and experts back in January and February very carefully explained how AI solutions such as contact tracing, predictive modeling, and chemical discovery would lead to a truncated pandemic. Didnt most of us figure wed be back to business as usual by mid to late June?

But June turned to July and now were seeing record case numbers on a daily basis. August looks to be brutal. Despite playing home to nearly all of the worlds largest technology companies, the US has become the epicenter of the outbreak. Other nations with advanced AI programs arent necessarily fairing much better.

Among the countries experts would consider competitive in the field of AI compared to the US, nearly all of them have lost the handle on the outbreak: China, Russia, UK, South Korea, etc. Its bad news all the way down.

Figuring out why requires a combination of retrospect and patience. Were not far enough through the pandemic to understand exactly whats gone wrong this things far too alive and kicking for a post-mortem. But we can certainly see where AI hype is currently leading us astray.

Among the many early promises made by the tech community and the governments depending on it, was the idea that contact tracing would make it possible for targeted reopenings. The big idea was that AI could sort out who else a person who contracted COVID-19 may have also infected. More magical AI would then figure out how to keep the healthies away from the sicks and wed be able to both quarantine and open businesses at the same time.

This is an example of the disconnect between AI devs and general reality. A system wherein people allow the government to track their every movement can only work with complete participation from a population with absolute faith in their government. Worse, the more infections you have the less reliable contact-tracing becomes.

Thats why only a handful of small countries even went so far as to try it and as far as we know there isnt any current data supporting this approach actually mitigates the spread of COVID-19.

The next big area where AI was supposed to help was in modeling. For a time, the entire technology news cycle was dominated by headlines declaring that AI had first discovered the COVID-19 threat and machine learning would determine exactly how the virus would spread.

Unfortunately modeling a pandemic isnt an exact science. You cant train a neural network on data from past COVID-19 pandemics because there arent any, this coronavirus is novel. That means our models started with guesses and were subsequently trained on up-to-date data from the unfolding pandemic.

To put this in perspective: using on-the-fly data to model a novel pandemic is the equivalent of knowing you have at least a million dollars in pennies, but only being able to talk about the amount youve physically counted in any given period of time.

In other words: our AI models havent proven much better than our best guesses. And they can only show us a tiny part of the overall picture because were only working with the data we can actually see. Up to 80 percent of COVID-19 carriers are asymptomatic and a mere fraction of all possible carriers have been tested.

What about testing? Didnt AI make testing easier? Kind of but not really. AI has made a lot of things easier for the medical community, but not perhaps in the way you think. There isnt a test bot that you can pour a vial of blood into to get an instantgreen or red infected indicator. The best weve got, for the most part, is background AI that generally helps the medical world run.

Sure theres some targeted solutions from the ML community helping frontline professionals deal with the pandemic. Were not taking anything away from the thousands of developers working hard to solve problems. But, realistically, AI isnt providing game-changer solutions that face up against major pandemic problems.

Its making sure truck drivers know which supplies to deliver first. Its helping nurses autocorrect their emails. Its working traffic lights in some cities, which helps with getting ambulances and emergency responders around.

And its even making pandemic life easier for regular folks too. The fact that youre still getting packages (even if theyre delayed) is a testament to the power of AI. Without algorithms, Amazon and its delivery pipeline would not be able to maintain the infrastructure necessary to ship you a set of fuzzy bunny slippers in the middle of a pandemic.

AI is useful during the pandemic, but its not out there finding the vaccine. Weve spent the last few years here at TNW talking about how AI will one day make chemical compound discovery a trivial matter. Surely finding the proper sequence of proteins or figuring out exactly how to mutate a COVID-killer virus is all in a days work for todays AI systems right? Not so much.

Despite the fact Google and NASA told us wed reached quantum supremacy last year, we havent seen useful quantum algorithms running on cloud-accessible quantum computers like weve been told we would. Scientists and researchers almost always tout chemical discovery as one of the hard problems that quantum computers can solve. But nobody knows when. What we do know is that today, in 2020, humans are still painstakingly building a vaccine. When its finished itll be squishy meatbags who get the credit, not quantum robots.

In times of peace, every new weapon looks like the end-all-be-all solution until you test it. We havent had many giant global emergencies to test our modern AI on. Its done well with relatively small-scale catastrophes like hurricanes and wildfires, but its been relegated to the rear echelon of the pandemic fight because AI simply isnt mature enough to think outside of the boxes we build it in yet.

At the end of the day, most of our pandemic problems are human problems. The science is extremely clear: wear a mask, stay more than six feet away from each other, and wash your hands. This isnt something AI can directly help us with.

But that doesnt mean AI isnt important. The lessons learned by the field this year will go a long way towards building more effective solutions in the years to come. Heres hoping this pandemic doesnt last long enough for these yet-undeveloped systems to become important in the fight against COVID-19.

Published July 24, 2020 19:21 UTC

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Heres why AI didnt save us from COVID-19 - The Next Web