China's Race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology

[JSCh]

Chinese AI promotes accurate, quick diagnosis of cervical cancer
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-18 15:33:35|Editor: Liangyu

GUANGZHOU, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, Chinese researchers have developed a rapid and accurate screening model to diagnose cervical cancer, a common and fatal disease in women.

Cervical cancer, caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV), is the fourth most frequent cancer in women worldwide, with an estimated 570,000 new cases reported and 311,000 deaths from the disease in 2018, according to the World Health Organization.

In China, the incidence and death rates of cervical cancer are also high, with 106,000 new cases reported and about 48,000 deaths last year.

The current method to detect abnormal cervical cells is cytology-based screening, known as the Pap test. It is often done during a pelvic examination which allows the health care professional to have a clear view of the cervix and upper vagina by a speculum and take a sample of cervical cells.

Based on more than 200,000 pathological images selected from over 43.5 million cervical screening samples, experts from KingMed Diagnostics, a Guangzhou-based medical diagnostic testing company, along with computer engineers from Huawei Cloud, a subsidiary of the Chinese tech giant Huawei, over one year developed an AI-assisted screening model, which can diagnose the disease with an accuracy of over 99 percent, while costing only one-tenth of the examination time performed by pathologists.

"Pathologists spend an average of six minutes in examining a cervical screening sample under a microscope, while the AI model just needs 36 seconds per case," said Luo Pifu, director of the company's pathological department and lead researcher of the program.

According to Li Yinghua, chief information officer of KingMed Diagnostics, the company's AI-assisted screening will help offset the shortage of well-trained pathologists, as well as expand the scope of early examination of cervical cancer in China.

In 2018, KingMed and Huawei agreed to cooperate in building an AI model for cervical cancer screening.

To train, validate and test the AI, developers fed it with 32,000 samples collected by the company from six provinces in the past 12 years.

The AI was built on the basis of ModelArts, an AI development platform developed by Huawei Cloud which turned the diagnostic experiences accumulated by experts into algorithms and models.

The AI can automatically complete the diagnosis procedure, while the pathologists only need to review and confirm the positive cases, said Tu Dandan, a senior technical director of the Huawei Cloud.

The two companies will continue cooperation to explore more possible applications of the AI technologies in the field of pathology, such as breast, digestive system, kidney and blood diseases.

 

[onebyone]

Hang-Shao-Tai Railway May Become China's First AI Railway
XU WEI
DATE : JUL 18 2019/SOURCE : YICAI

Hang-Shao-Tai Railway May Become China's First AI Railway
(Yicai Global) July 18 -- Hang-Shao-Tai Railway, China's first high-speed rail transit project that is in part funded by private capital, may also become the country's first high-speed railway that uses artificial intelligence in its operation.

China Railway Gecent Technology, which runs a train wifi application, and Hangshaotai Railway, the project company, penned a cooperation agreement, The Paper reported. The route, slated for 2021, will connect the cities of Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Taizhou in eastern Zhejiang province.

AI may be applied to the construction and client services, CRGT's Chief Executive Pan Yunbin told The Paper. CRGT, a joint venture between China Railway Investment, Geely Holding Group and Tencent Holdings, offers rail transit passengers with wifi services, including those related to entertainment, food takeout, and e-commerce.

The project investment has risen to CNY14.8 billion (USD2.2 billion) as nearly all of the land has been secured while about one-third of the construction is done, according to the same report. Hangshaotai still needs to invest CNY13 billion this year. The firm started building the largest planned station of Taizhou in late June.

AI will be deployed at stations. New technologies can reduce labor costs so lighting among other equipment in the stations will be managed by robots, Pan said.

The Internet of Things and AI can improve passengers' travel experiences by diversifying and customizing them, said Wu Peirong, general manager of Hangshaotai, which was formed by China State Railway Group, Zhejiang's provincial government and a clutch of private firms led by conglomerate Fosun International.

Editor: Emmi Laine

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Keywords:Hang-Shao-Tai Railway , China Railway Gecent Technology Co. , Smart Railway


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[JSCh]

NEWS RELEASE 2-AUG-2019
US and China should collaborate, not compete, to bring AI to healthcare
SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE

​

In the wake of the US government ordering the Chinese artificial intelligence company iCarbonX to divest its majority ownership stake in the Cambridge, Mass.-based company PatientsLikeMe, Eric Topol, M.D., of Scripps Research, argues for more, not less, collaboration between China and the U.S. on artificial intelligence development. CREDIT: Scripps Research

In the wake of the U.S. government ordering the Chinese artificial intelligence company iCarbonX to divest its majority ownership stake in the Cambridge, Mass.-based company PatientsLikeMe, Eric Topol, M.D., of Scripps Research, argues for more, not less, collaboration between China and the U.S. on artificial intelligence development.

In the latest edition of Nature Biotechnology, Topol co-authors the commentary article, titled "It Takes a Planet," with venture capitalist and artificial intelligence expert, Kai-Fu Li, Ph.D., CEO of the China-based tech investment firm Sinovation Ventures. They argue that the "global health benefits of international collaboration, although challenging to actualize, outweigh those of confrontation and competition."

They critique the forced divestiture of iCarbonX as misguided and harmful to the U.S. artificial intelligence sector. "Chinese academics and companies already have unfettered access to personal health data," they write. "To compete in AI health, U.S. companies will need access to clinical data on a similar scale. How will that be possible if the current isolationist policy continues?"

Topol and Li note that big data has irrevocably changed the landscape of medicine, with every individual representing vast amounts of medical information--genomic and otherwise--that no human can adequately process. This is occurring at a time when there are unacceptable levels of medical errors, inefficiency, waste, burnout and depression among clinicians, and high costs for medical care. In addition, they note that poor access to medical care among people living in rural areas increases inequities in healthcare.

"These problems mandate big thinking on how we can pool our resources to promote better health everywhere and for everyone," they write. "We have at our fingertips technology capable of analyzing petabytes of data. The difference now is that it is potentially achievable by capitalizing on the ability to analyze the data rather than capitulating to the challenge. Let us embrace this opportunity by working together collaboratively across the planet for the greater good of all."



US and China should collaborate, not compete, to bring AI to healthcare | EurekAlert! Science News

 

[JSCh]

23:06, 05-Aug-2019
China's first 'land, sea and air' self-driving testing zone completed
CGTN

CGTN Photo

China's first "land, sea and air" self-driving comprehensive testing area for intelligent connected vehicles (IVC), covering a closed testing area of 3.2 square kilometers in the Lingang area of Shanghai, is operational.

The newly built self-driving system demonstration area is equipped with the country's most comprehensive test scenarios and functions, which will provide vital data for future development of self-driving techniques and road conditions.

Since the recent opening of the testing center, the first of its kind in China, various vehicles have been put to the test.

One of the scenarios for self-driving trucks is the operation of autonomous docking.

Alley docking requires a specific process including proper vehicle speed control and braking to correctly back the vehicle into position for loading or unloading of containers in a port area to eliminate rough docking and related damage.

"Through this kind of environmental simulation, we want to better help artificial intelligence to energize the real economy," said Xue Jiancong, deputy general manager of TuSimple.

At the testing demonstration area, roads with a total length of 4.7 kilometers of different conditions were built. Dynamic scenarios include pedestrians crossing, obstacles on the road as well as other simulated scenarios such as light rain, moderate rain and rainstorms were set to test the sensitivity of self-driving sensing devices under various weather conditions.

With a total length of 500 meters, the tunnel at the demonstration area is the longest among the testing roads in China and was built to the national standard.

As vehicles enter the tunnel, they lose GPS signal and are tested on whether they can rely on their own sensory systems and inertial navigation.

The demonstration area will be opened to self-driving enterprises across China and provide services including self-driving testing methods research and data integration management.

"The scenes on the road are very abundant. Currently, we have accumulated more than 130 small scenes. We will make the scenes more complete according to, for example, the needs of the enterprises," said Zhou Anwu, test engineer of Shanghai Lingang Intelligent Connected Technology Research Center Company Limited.

Over one year since Lingang launched the construction of the "land, sea and air" self-driving system comprehensive demonstration area, the low-altitude navigable flight airspace, the one-square-kilometer Dishui Lake unmanned ship testing field and self-driving testing zone were launched in succession. The innovative platforms have already attracted a series of artificial intelligence enterprises of self-driving vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned vessels to gather around the Dishui Lake.

 

[JSCh]

AI provides virtual hand in sorting trash
By LIN SHUJUAN/HE QI | China Daily | Updated: 2019-08-17 07:11

The AI automation trash bins. CHINA DAILY

Waste sorting is becoming less of a burden in China, especially with artificial intelligence helping streamline the process.

Shanghai enacted its compulsory waste sorting law on July 1, and announced a plan to expand AI's application in trash sorting as part of the city's attempt to become a national and global leader in the technology.

Shanghai, host of the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference from Aug 29-31, announced the application scenario of AI-powered autonomous waste sorting on July 2 along with the expansion of 27 other new AI applications.

Trash bins that use AI to automatically sort and properly organize garbage have been set up in Shanghai's AIsland, a dedicated hub for AI innovation and application in Zhangjiang Science and Technology City, Pudong New Area. Established in May, the 66,000-square-meter hub is the first of its kind nationwide.

According to the scenario detailed in Shanghai Chengtou Holding Co's "application of AI technology in the classification of domestic waste", trash cans will eventually be able to distinguish between various kinds of waste and alarm users if they sort trash incorrectly. Garbage trucks will be able to identify different trash cans and process them accordingly. In waste disposal transfer stations, robots will collect recyclable trash and put it into recycling devices after inspecting it. Residents can also use apps to command robots to collect their trash.

Tao Junjie, director of Shanghai Chengtou's department of science, technology and information, said the company currently handles final disposal of waste.

"Improper disposal by households brings challenges to our final disposal. We hope AI can help improve waste sorting in the very beginning of trash disposal," Tao told Shanghai-based newspaper Jiefang Daily.

Jin Lei, founder of Alpheus Intelligence & IOT Technology Co in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, a company dedicated to AI-assisted waste sorting solutions, considered AI applications in the field as feasible to help China deal with its heaping trash challenge.

"Trash sorting is imperative in China. People are taking action but it will take quite a while for the culture to set in. We need AI to accelerate the process because we can't wait," Jin said.

In addition to waste sorting, the 28 new scenarios recently announced by Shanghai also cover many other fields such as smart buildings, smart businesses, smart driving and other scenarios that focus on tackling hard technological issues.

Officials said the scenarios will help create a comprehensive AI application cluster in Shanghai and the city will collect solutions from global AI companies to solve problems.

Wu Jincheng, chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, said the city will strive to open more application scenarios and encourage the latest achievements in AI.

With rich application scenarios, Shanghai has been vigorously promoting the development of AI in recent years, attracting industry leaders like Microsoft, IBM and Alibaba.

The city is eyeing a global AI hub with plans to expand the scale of its industry.

 

[Menthol]

It's crazy!

China put AI on everything, even a trashcan.

But truly a brilliant idea! A start of something big.

Sorting garbage is the impossible thing to do... if we put human psychology factor into it, not a nice job. Garbage has become a big problem for decades but unaware by the public. So many policies related to garbage are never successful and 100% effective.

I think AI garbage sorting machine is the solution.

 

[JSCh]

NEWS * 21 AUGUST 2019
Will China lead the world in AI by 2030?
The country’s artificial-intelligence research is growing in quality, but the field still plays catch up to the United States in terms of high-impact papers, people and ethics.

Sarah O’Meara

China’s huge population is helping the nation make great strides in facial-recognition technology.Credit: Gilles Sabrie/NYT/eyevine

China not only has the world’s largest population and looks set to become the largest economy — it also wants to lead the world when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI).

In 2017, the Communist Party of China set 2030 as the deadline for this ambitious AI goal, and, to get there, it laid out a bevy of milestones to reach by 2020. These include making significant contributions to fundamental research, being a favoured destination for the world’s brightest talents and having an AI industry that rivals global leaders in the field.

As this first deadline approaches, researchers note impressive leaps in the quality of China’s AI research. They also predict a shift in the nation’s ability to retain homegrown talent. That is partly because the government has implemented some successful retainment programmes and partly because worsening diplomatic and trade relations mean that the United States — its main rival when it comes to most things, including AI — has become a less-attractive destination.

“If America loses its openness edge, then the country risks pushing AI talents right back into the arms of its competitors, including China,” says AI analyst Joy Dantong Ma at the Paulson Institute, a think tank in Chicago, Illinois, aimed at fostering US–China relations.

​

But observers warn that there are several factors that could stymie the nation’s plans, including a lack of contribution to the theories used to develop the tools underpinning the field, and a reticence by Chinese companies to invest in the research needed to make fundamental breakthroughs.

The country’s pursuit of AI domination is more than a symbolic race with the United States, say scientists. AI technologies promise advances in health care, transport and communications, and the nations that make fundamental breakthroughs in the field are likely to shape its future directions and reap the most benefits.

“There’s no doubt China sees AI as one of the critical technologies of this era and wants to match the United States,” says Jeffrey Ding, who studies China’s development of AI at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, UK.

The initiative unveiled in 2017, known as the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, has spurred myriad policies and billions of dollars of investment in research and development from ministries, provincial governments and private companies.

Fundamental impact
China is well on its way to making a significant impact, according to an analysis of the most-cited AI papers indexed on the scholarly search engine Microsoft Academic. The analysis, by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, Washington, found that China has steadily increased its share of authorship of the top 10% most-cited papers. It’s share peaked at 26.5% in 2018, not far behind the United States, at 29%, and whose share is declining. If this trend continues, China could overtake the United States in this measure next year. Other analyses show that average citations for AI papers by authors in China have been steadily increasing and are above the world average, but lower than for papers by US authors.

China also has world-leading companies in computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing, including SenseTime, Unisound, iFLYTEK and Face++, says Zheng Nanning, director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Xi’an Jiaotong University.

But the country is still behind in shaping the core technological tools of AI. For instance, the open-source platforms TensorFlow and Caffe, developed by US academics and companies to design, build and train the sets of algorithms that enable computers to function more like the human brain, are widely used in industry and academia the world over. Yet PaddlePaddle, one of the major open-source platforms developed by Chinese company Baidu, is used mostly for the quick development of AI products, says Zheng.

China also lags behind in AI hardware, he says. Most of the world’s leading AI-enabled semiconductor chips are made by US companies such as Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Google and Advanced Micro Devices. “We also lack expertise in designing computing chips that can support advanced AI systems,” Zheng says.

Zheng predicts that it could take 5–10 years for China to reach the level of innovation in fundamental theories and algorithms occurring in the United States and the United Kingdom — but that it will get there.

Contributing to these fundamental theories and technologies will be key to China meeting its longer-term AI goals, says Kristin Shi-Kupfer, a political scientist at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think-tank in Berlin. Without progress in research to enable genuine breakthroughs in machine learning, there might be a ceiling to the growth that China can achieve in the field of AI, she says.

Time for talent
A factor that will be equally important to China’s progress — and in which there seems to be more promise — is the ability to hold onto talented researchers. According to the 2018 China AI Development Report, jointly written by academics and industry, by the end of 2017, China was home to the second-largest pool of AI scientists and engineers, about 18,200 people, ranking behind the United States, which had roughly 29,000. But China was just 6th in its number of top AI researchers — the most productive and highly cited authors, based on their h-index.

Ma says that computer scientists have typically trained in the United States and then stayed there to work for global technology companies.

There are signs that the situation is changing, however. AI institutes in China are trying to lure some of these researchers back to the mainland with high salaries. At Zheng’s robotics centre, for example, some of the professors are paid to 2–3 times more than others at the university, he says.

Zheng says that the centre also offers a more holistic evaluation system for staff than is found at many Chinese universities, which tend to reward high publication rates over other criteria. He has also implemented a hiring system that bypasses centralized university procedures and allows scientists to build teams of engineers quickly, and now runs undergraduate courses in AI.

The art of deployment
China’s plan to have globally leading AI companies by 2020 is also within reach, given the growing expertise of its three core tech companies, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba, says Ding. “These companies have become global leaders in AI, although they are still not in the same tier as US companies, such as Google and Microsoft,” he says.

China also has at least ten privately owned AI start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion, including facial-recognition firm SenseTime, according to the research company CB Insights in New York.

Ma says that a big advantage for China is the size of its population, which creates a large potential workforce and unique opportunities to train AI systems, including large patient data sets for training software to predict disease. In February, Chinese researchers showed that their natural language processing system could diagnose common childhood conditions from electronic health records with comparable accuracy to experienced paediatricians1. The data set included nearly 600,000 children visiting a single hospital; accessing that amount of data would be difficult in many other countries.

AI law unto China
If China is to have global influence in the field of AI, it is also important that it has proper governance, says Ma, because this will allow researchers and companies in China to build the trust necessary to gain users across the world — and to build collaborations with researchers in other countries. Like many countries, China has begun the process of setting ethical principles for its development and use of AI. If Chinese companies don’t promise good governance, they won’t be allowed access to global data, says Ma. “It’s in their interest to play fair.”

In June, the National New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Governance Committee released eight principles to be observed by those working in AI development. These include harmony, fairness and justice, respect for privacy, safety, transparency, accountability and collaboration, and are similar to those released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in May, says Ding.

But the ethical issues can vary from country to country. China, for instance, has attracted criticism from human-rights advocates over alleged uses of facial recognition technology to track members of the Uighur people, a predominantly Muslim community in Xinjiang. That said, Chinese authorities are not alone in using AI for law enforcement — the US Federal Bureau of Investigation uses face recognition technology as part of its investigations.

One of the key challenges faced by all groups is transparency in how algorithms make decisions. But there are no agreed standards for this, so China, like many countries, is still working out how to proceed. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which gives users the right to ask how an algorithm comes to its decision when it relates to their own lives, is an example of good AI governance, says Ma.

Nature 572, 427-428 (2019)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02360-7


Will China lead the world in AI by 2030? | Nature

 

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Chinese murder suspect ‘caught by AI software that spotted dead person’s face’

23 Aug, 2019

A man accused of murdering his girlfriend in southeast China was caught after facial recognition software suggested he had tried to scan a dead person’s face to apply for a loan.

...
Zhang is also accused of pretending to be the unnamed victim and contacting her employers via her WeChat account to ask for time off work.
...
When he arrived in his hometown of Sanming the next day, police said he tried to apply for a loan using an app called Money Station, which uses artificial intelligence to verify the applicants’ identity and asks them to wink to help the process along.

But the facial recognition technology found no signs of eye movement.

Staff at the lender contacted police after a manual check found bruises on the unnamed woman’s face and a thick red mark around her neck.
...

Its voice recognition software also detected that it was a man, rather than a woman, applying for the loan.



https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...spect-caught-ai-software-spotted-dead-persons


Commentary

This man would have been caught anyway, having left too many clues behind him, starting from the street CCTV (disguised as "traffic enforcement cameras"), and all the cellphone base stations...

 

[JSCh]

18:16, 15-Sep-2019
Why can China lead in 5G and AI sectors?
CGTN

Thirty-two percent of the Chinese firms have successfully adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their business process, followed by the United States (22 percent) and the European Union (estimated 18 percent), according to a 2019 report from U.S.-based think tank Center for Data Innovation (CDI).

AI research is increasingly gaining traction in a growing number of countries because AI is thought to be the foundation of next generation technology. A lot of hinges on AI development: competitiveness of companies, increase in industrial productivity, protection of national security and solving social challenges.

5G, which is expected to support various kinds of AI applications in the future, is also one of the hottest and most competitive fields today. China, without a doubt, has a leg up on other countries, after a number of European nations adopted its standard and technology as their first choice in 5G deployment.

VCG Photo

Far-sighted national strategy

China's strategy for the cutting-edge technologies was set several years ago under the framework of the "13th Five-Year Plan" (2016-2020) and "Made in China 2025," two state-level initiatives supporting the country's technology innovation.

After losing the battleground in the 1G and 2G eras, playing catch-up in 3G and 4G mobile technologies, China has been invested in the development of the 5G network to be a leading innovator.

In 2013 when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), along with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology, jointly founded the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, companies, telecom operators and tech researchers teamed up with peers from the U.S. Europe, Japan, and South Korea to push forward the formulation of a global unified 5G standard.

In 2017, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang highlighted 5G as one of the emerging industries to be accelerated in his government work report. The same year, the MIIT issued the 5G Development Guidance document to make 5G an important infrastructure for China's economic and social development.

"Chinese operators see their job as implementing government policy, whereas most global telecom companies try to balance competitive factors and will naturally invest at a slower pace," Chris Lane, a research analyst for investment management firm Sanford C. Bernstein, told the MIT Technology Review.

VCG Photo

Financial input

China has already invested over 100 billion U.S. dollars in 4G from 2013 to 2018, according to Goldman Sachs, and is expected to invest another 150 billion U.S. dollars in its 5G network through 2025.

The domestic AI industry has attracted 60 percent of all global investment from 2013 to the first quarter of 2018, a report from Tsinghua University shows. In addition, the MIIT plans to allocate 950 million U.S. dollars annually to fund strategic AI projects.

China's AI market will reach 11.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2023, up from 1.76 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, according to IDC's latest report in May.

But from a comprehensive perspective, China still lags behind in terms of AI basic research, talent pool and hardware development – though this is set to change.

 

[JSCh]

First AI bus debuts in Shanghai with customized services
By Ji Yuqiao Source:Global Times Published: 2019/9/17 21:23:40

China's first AI custom bus. Photo: Courtesy of Alipay

China's first AI custom bus debuted in Shanghai on Tuesday. Its services include customized routes, making the bus as convenient as a cab, only much cheaper, according to the makers.

Passengers book online. The 40-seat bus waits at the appointed place between a fixed start and finish. Then the bus takes passengers where they want.

The AI bus, which was researched by Alipay, can save 30 percent on commuting time over a traditional bus and a one-way ticket is 16 yuan ($2.3).

Seeking to avoid too many passengers on one vehicle, the bus boasts a data platform that monitors the number of buses on the road, the amount and flow of passengers in real time with AI technology.

The bus has more than 100 routes in the city designed by AI analysis technology, according to an Alipay spokesperson.

Bus companies can plan routes according to a growing database on passengers' needs, said the staff member, who only gave her surname as Wang.

The 40 seats can be 80 percent occupied at morning peak rush hour, Wang said.

Custom buses have long existed, but AI buses that analyze real-time data from mobile map platforms to screen passengers' travel demands is new, she said.

Such AI buses might cover the whole country in the next three years.

A 25-year-old Shanghai white collar worker told the Global Times on Tuesday that if she had the opportunity, she would choose the bus for her daily commute.

"It will save time and it's cheaper than taxis. I was told the bus can even keep away from traffic jams through AI: much better than traditional buses," said the woman, who only gave the surname of Li.

A pregnant caller to Radio Shanghai said she too preferred the new AI bus.

"Through booking tickets online, I can have my own seat every day during the commute. It is convenient and safe for me," she told the station.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese scientists develop AI-powered cancer diagnosis system
By Li Wenfang in Guangzhou | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2019-10-09 16:29

Chinese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence-powered system for diagnosing upper gastrointestinal cancers through the analysis of endoscopic imaging data.

The system, based on data from more than 50,000 endoscopic images of upper gastrointestinal cancer patients and over 120,000 endoscopic images of non-patients, has registered a 96 percent accuracy rate in diagnosing upper gastrointestinal cancers and 90 percent accuracy in diagnosing such cancers at an early stage.

In the research led by Xu Ruihua, president of the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, the system examined more than 1.036 million endoscopic images of 84,424 upper gastrointestinal cancer patients in six hospitals.

An article on the research was published in international science journal Lancet Oncology earlier this month.

This Gastrointestinal Artificial Intelligence Diagnostic System (GRAIDS) was capable of analyzing as many as 118 images per second.

The research team also developed a computer-aided detection (CAD) system for real-time identification of upper gastrointestinal cancerous lesions in routine endoscopic examinations.

The computer with the CAD system was connected to an endoscopy unit, allowing for fully automated diagnostic assistance during endoscopic examinations.

The research team also constructed a cloud-based, multi-institutional AI-fuled platform for patients requiring upper gastrointestinal endoscopies.

It made available a website to provide free access to GRAIDS, allowing clinicians and patients to upload endoscopic images and get a second opinion from GRAIDS.

An open-access endoscopic image database was also made available on the website, which may be useful both for training endoscopists and to researchers in the field of endoscopy and AI-aided medical imaging.

Upper gastrointestinal cancers, including oesophageal cancer and gastric cancer, kill 400,000 patients in China every year.

Most upper gastrointestinal cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages because their signs and symptoms tend to be latent and non-specific, leading to poor prognoses.

In countries with an unbalanced distribution of medical resources between urban and rural areas, GRAIDS can help bridge the cancer diagnosis gap between national hospitals and primary care hospitals, according to the article in Lancet Oncology.

 

[JSCh]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1182161604160282624

 

[JSCh]

Chinese researchers develop evaluation system for infant vision
Source: Xinhua| 2019-10-24 21:07:24|Editor: huaxia

File photo shows babies at a baby race in Xiangyang, central China's Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Yang Dong)

The system can be used for the screening of infant visual functions as well as the timely detection of infant visual impairments.

BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have developed an intelligent system for evaluating infant vision with deep learning technology, according to the China Science Daily Thursday.

Researchers from Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center of Sun Yat-sen University developed the system based on the behavioral changes of visually impaired infants. The system can be used for the screening of infant visual functions as well as the timely detection of infant visual impairments.

Researchers video-recorded the behavioral patterns of 4,196 infants who experienced varying degrees of visual loss and developed a deep learning algorithm trained with the videos to find out how vision loss is associated with behavioral changes.

They identified a quantitative relationship between the frequency of more than 10 behavioral patterns and the severity of visual impairment.

The results showed that video recording of behavioral patterns can help evaluate infants' visual function. Compared with traditional detection methods, the system has higher feasibility and accuracy, which has less demand for infant cooperation.

The research also offers a reference for further exploration of the visual development of infants and young children, according to the report.

The research was published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

 

[JSCh]

DECEMBER 6, 2019
AI judges and verdicts via chat app: the brave new world of China's digital courts
by Kelly Wang

Artificial-intelligence judges, cyber-courts, and verdicts delivered on chat apps—welcome to China's brave new world of justice spotlighted by authorities this week.

China is encouraging digitisation to streamline case-handling within its sprawling court system using cyberspace and technologies like blockchain and cloud computing, China's Supreme People's Court said in a policy paper.

The efforts include a "mobile court" offered on popular social media platform WeChat that has already handled more than three million legal cases or other judicial procedures since its launch in March, according to the Supreme People's Court.


...

https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-ai-verdicts-chat-app-brave.html

 

[JSCh]

'AI Robot' on the prowl to fight internet fraud
China Daily | Updated: 2019-12-17 09:33

[Photo/VCG]

Online service warns potential victims about suspicious activity via voice, text

An artificial intelligence service designed to prevent people from being defrauded was unveiled on Monday after a successful pilot program.

Called the AI Robot, the online service－released by the criminal investigation bureau of the Ministry of Public Security and designed by internet giant Alibaba－can warn residents about suspicious online activity through its voice or text system.

For example, if police detect that a phone number is frequently used by con artists, the service will call potential victims, warning them that information they received about money transfers is fraudulent. According to the bureau, people can see a special anti-fraud number for the police on their phone.

"The AI technology can help us save manpower and improve our work efficiency, and it can also keep people out of fraud traps more quickly than we can," said Liu Zhongyi, the bureau's head.

The service has successfully aided police in preventing more than 3,000 people each day from being swindled since the pilot program was launched in some public security bureaus on Nov 15, Liu said.

The service has been extended across the country since Monday.

"If residents ignore the robot's warning or do not believe the robot, we'll call the potential victims via our telephone number to save them from the fraud," said Zhao Wei, a police officer from an anti-fraud center under the Beijing Public Security Bureau.

As for those likely tricked by swindlers, Zhao said she and her colleagues would talk to them or help them face-to-face.

"Our aim is to prevent people from being cheated as quickly as we can and to help them reduce or avoid economic loss," she added.

Zheng Junfang, chief platform governance officer of Alibaba, said they technological innovations to assist police officers in fighting fraud and ensuring public security, "because combating fraud requires effort from all walks of life".

On Monday, several internet and technology companies including Qihoo 360, China's largest security software provider, and Xiaomi Corp, a Chinese smartphone maker, also joined the fraud fight.

Fighting telecom and online fraud as well as infringements of personal information has been a priority for public security departments in recent years, especially after Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old college-bound student, died of cardiac arrest in 2016 after she found out she had been conned out of 9,900 yuan ($1,410) she had saved for her college tuition.

Since this year, police nationwide have solved about 162,000 cases related to telecom or online fraud and caught 139,000 suspects, up 42 percent and 93 percent year-on-year respectively, according to Liu.

Since January, Beijing police have intensified their fight against cybercrimes, especially those using computers or technologies to infringe on people's privacy and commit online fraud, a statement from the Beijing Public Security Bureau said.

The city's police have solved more than 7,800 internet-related cases and caught more than 8,600 suspects, it added.