Intel: Born out of AI, and ready to fight the epidemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a common challenge facing the world. Intelligent technologies, represented by artificial intelligence, have played an important and critical role in this fight against the pandemic and are helping humanity to jointly cope with this major challenge. On April 23, Intel held an online salon on artificial intelligence-assisted technology in the fight against the pandemic, with the theme of "Born out of AI, Fighting the Pandemic is a Must", and worked with customers and partners to share real cases and introduce Intel's philosophy and practice of promoting the implementation of AI applications, so as to better build industry consensus and accelerate the deep integration of AI with many industries such as healthcare. 

Born out of AI, we cannot shirk our responsibility to fight the epidemic -- Artificial intelligence helps science and technology fight the epidemic online salon

In the opening speech, Liang Yali, Vice President of Intel's Marketing Group and General Manager of Industry Solutions Division in China, introduced Intel's many initiatives in the global technology fight against the epidemic, shared the trends and challenges of AI integration in medical applications, and explained Intel's layout to help customers accelerate AI deployment and implementation from cloud to end. In the salon discussion session, hosted by Gao Fei, Editor-in-Chief and General Manager of Zhiding.com, Chai Xiangfei, Founder and CEO of Huiyi Huiying, Pan Jing, CEO of Shanghai Titanium Robot Co., Ltd., Tu Weiwei, Chief Scientist of Fourth Paradigm, Ling Xiaojun, Product Director of Inovance Technology, Du Xinze, Senior Analyst of CCID Consulting Artificial Intelligence Industry Research Center, and Yi Hongwei, Director of Intel Asia Artificial Intelligence Sales Technology, shared their thoughts and insights based on the actual application of artificial intelligence in the fight against the epidemic.

The "Intelligent X Effect" is highlighted, and Intel fully supports the fight against the epidemic

Intel first proposed the "Smart X Effect" not long ago . The development and application of smart technology releases the value of data and brings industrial and economic upgrades to a new turning point. During the epidemic, smart technology plays an increasingly important role in medical assistance and life sciences, the orderly operation of the economy and society, and public services. The "Smart X Effect" is becoming increasingly prominent.

Liang Yali said that while the COVID-19 pandemic has put many life scenarios on hold, it has also promoted the digitalization of society as a whole and accelerated the integration of healthcare and artificial intelligence. Intel is accelerating the use of smart technology to combat the pandemic, promoting new technological discoveries, and better helping society cope with challenges.

To date, Intel's donations and support for the fight against the epidemic have totaled $60 million. More importantly, as the initiator of the Open COVID Pledge, Intel has also opened up its vast intellectual property library, one of the largest intellectual property portfolios in the world, to scientists and researchers of the new coronavirus for free. Intel hopes and believes that opening up its intellectual property to scientists and researchers for free will save more lives.

Liang Yali believes that the deep integration of artificial intelligence, as a representative intelligent technology, with the medical and health industry is an inevitable trend: medical artificial intelligence has accelerated its development due to the epidemic, and its applications are wide and play a key role, and its applications in medical institutions at different levels are diversified. The prospects are broad, but the application of artificial intelligence in the medical and health industry still faces many technical challenges, including data volume, data quality, model interpretability, model versatility, and model security.

Intel leverages the advantages of combining software and hardware to lead AI technology innovation and help customers accelerate AI deployment from cloud to end. It also makes multi-dimensional efforts to build an AI innovation ecosystem and promote the brilliant development of AI in thousands of industries. In terms of hardware, Intel provides a comprehensive XPU chip platform based on the Xeon Scalable Processor with built-in AI acceleration. In terms of software, Intel provides fully optimized software to accelerate and simplify the development and deployment of AI technology, covering multiple levels such as libraries, frameworks, tools and solutions. In terms of ecology, Intel and its partners work together to provide rich and diverse AI application scenarios and experiences, and cooperate extensively with industry, academia, and research to jointly carry out cutting-edge research and jointly promote talent training.

Working with partners to accelerate the implementation of AI applications

From medical imaging diagnosis and "contactless" applications in hospitals to smart mask manufacturing and epidemic prevention policy formulation, Intel has teamed up with partners to help AI fight the epidemic in multiple dimensions and promote the implementation of practical AI applications in the medical industry.

Patient testing is the first important hurdle that must be overcome in the fight against the epidemic. "Huiyi Huiying has cooperated with four or five hospitals in Hubei and more than a dozen hospitals outside Hubei very early on, and quickly collected CT images of nearly 4,000 new crown patients, and cooperated with more than 13,000 pneumonia images of non-new crown patients to quickly develop an artificial intelligence system, which was soon applied in more than 20 hospitals in China." Chai Xiangfei said. Based on Intel's optimization and computing power support, and combined with artificial intelligence neural network models, Huiyi Huiying's solution can help doctors make diagnoses faster and more accurately, prevent infected people from spreading the virus to others, and provide doctors with quantitative information on lesions, bringing more accurate treatment plans to patients. Huiyi Huiying also worked with partners to promote the solution to many different countries. "Since the beginning of March, it has been deployed and used in more than 40 countries overseas."

The protection of medical staff is very important in the fight against the epidemic. "Contactless" robots not only reduce the workload of medical staff, but also reduce the risk of infection. Pan Jing said: "After the outbreak of the epidemic, Titanium's disinfection robot immediately became an 'Internet celebrity' product. It can help medical staff reduce unnecessary occupational exposure and can theoretically guarantee a 99.9999% killing rate for the new coronavirus." In addition to the Internet celebrity disinfection robot "Dabai", Titanium's medical supplies intelligent delivery robots, primary screening robots, ward service robots, etc. also promptly supported the front line of the epidemic, including more than 10 hospitals in Wuhan, more than 20 hospitals in Shanghai, and more than 200 key tertiary hospitals across the country. Titanium Robot's products are also widely used in many public health fields outside of hospitals, such as quarantine points and schools.

Masks are basic protective tools, and the demand is exploding. "In response to the needs, pain points and challenges of the mask industry, based on Huichuan's full understanding of the mask production line process, we combined Intel's machine vision, edge computing and other technologies to propose an overall solution, the main features of which are fully automatic, fully electric, adaptive, bus-based and remote." Ling Xiaojun said, "This effectively solves the problems in manufacturing, installation, debugging and use. The delivery of mask machines is faster, more efficient, and more stable in quality, reducing dependence on manual labor. In general, we hope to turn a traditional industry with low technology content into a high-tech industry, help the industrial upgrading of the traditional mask machine industry, and ultimately realize intelligent manufacturing."

In the fight against the epidemic, both national and local governments need to take different measures for different regions. How to accurately track the transmission path of the epidemic, screen high-risk groups, and deduce the development of the epidemic has always been an important and difficult task. As an internationally leading artificial intelligence platform company, Fourth Paradigm has maintained close joint technological innovation with Intel. While paying attention to the development of the epidemic and the safety of medical staff, they immediately established a joint team with the LAMDA Institute of Nanjing University and clinical experts from Subei People's Hospital to carry out technical research for key links in the epidemic prevention and control process of relevant departments. At present, Fourth Paradigm has developed AI-based precise prevention and control, epidemic deduction and virus tracing solutions, and has been invested in the front-line battle against the epidemic. Tu Weiwei said: "Based on the high-dimensional machine learning technology independently developed by 4Paradigm, we have built a digital twin system and a high-dimensional simulator that can learn at the provincial, municipal, district and county levels. It takes into account actual factors such as region, scenario, time, climate, and medical measures, and can simulate population mobility across the country. We found that the system can very accurately predict the actual infection situation and simulate and predict the impact of key decisions once they are implemented, providing an important basis for the formulation of timely and effective prevention and control policies, such as whether to take measures to close the city, whether to strictly control the community, and the allocation of medical resources, etc." In addition, the system further enriched the existing prevention and control screening model through high-dimensional machine learning and other technologies, and the screening accuracy of potential spreaders has increased from the original 5.8% to 93%.