| | DECEMBER 20208In FocusBY ANAMIKA SAHU, MANAGING EDITORLast year, India ranked third in AI research across the world, with 12,135 citable documents. There is no industry that AI hasn't crossed the path with, whether it's agriculture, healthcare, education, space, defense, gaming, automotive or others. But do we see AI being implemented on the ground level to reap benefits? While many argued about the usage of AI post a certain level, the last few months just changed everyone's perception.The pandemic turned to be one of the worst causes of global recession since 2009 apart from killing nearly 820,000+ people globally. Though the medical fraternity is working day and night breaking every boundary, AI is providing them more power to check COVID-19. How? AI is adept at identifying patterns from big data and China is indeed a perfect case-study to follow where using AI, the country put a check on the spread of coronavirus. The advancements in AI applications like NLP, data analytics, ML, deep learning and others helped the COVID warriors in contact tracing and vaccine development, thus putting a check on its spread while finding a cure too. The technology also provided virtual healthcare assistance in the form of chatbots that answers questions related to coronavirus, guide the patients, monitor the symptoms and even advice if they need to visit a hospital/doctor. AI also helps with image scan analysis, thus reducing healthcare staff workloads. On the other hand, using AI, robots are minimizing contact between patients and healthcare professionals.This is the new era in healthcare. And as this transition seems successful with positive results, we will see technology integrating into more functions and the process becoming a new normal for the humankind.Kept the Learning MovingAs the pandemic loomed, schools and educational institutes were shut. From few weeks to now even five months later, the schools are still running virtually. When all of a sudden our teachers were asked to move online to take classes, it was a challenge for them too to leverage the platform to provide seamless learning. Not just the masters but the students too were in a state of perplex on learning online. Parents were struggling to make the learning uninterrupted for their kids. But did they succeed and how did AI help them in doing so?The sudden pivot to remote learning put a strain on schools and students alike. This forced many schools to hastily deploy not just the online learning tools but also the use of analytics and AI mostly in higher education. AI helped schools monitor how well students hold up academically and emotionally during this crisis. Though theory can be completely shifted to online, practical, lab classes faced the wrath of the time. But virtual labs and videos created using AI are providing a shy of relief for the education sector that won't remain out of practical learning. Going forward, once AI and VR becomes a part of the ecosystem, the
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