DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AI VIRUS CONTROL SYSTEM

Overview

In contrast to natural intelligence shown by humans and animals which involve consciousness and emotions; artificial intelligence is a form of intelligence exhibited by machines and robots which enable computers to imitate the recognition, decision-making, learning and problem-solving abilities of the human mind. In majority of the use of Artificial Intelligence, a computer, robot or machine imitates the capabilities of the human brain by learning from a huge set of data which is more commonly called Big Data. Through the different types of learning which are supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning; AI models are able to go through Big Data and learn from these data sets to perform different abilities like facial recognition and predictive analysis. There are two subsets of Artificial Intelligence which are Machine Learning (ML) and Deep learning (DL).

One can think of AI as an onion with several layers. Machine Learning learns by itself by reprogramming its code as it digests more data in order to perform a specific task its designed to perform with higher accuracy. Deep learning is a subset of both machine learning and AI that teaches itself to perform a specific task with higher accuracy without human intervention.

AI is already widely adopted in most technology companies and is used by many individuals in our day to day lives. Examples of AI applications are Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, self-driving cars, etc.

1.2 Background and Motivation

The AI industry as of the 21st century has received so much publicity and promotion especially in the first decade of the century. Since then, it has grown to a point where its power and application have been better utilized in the enhancement of modern technology and civilization in specific industries like healthcare, automation, marketing/entertainment industry, risk management and so on.

In my opinion, the recent pandemic has reminded us of some loop holes we have in our current society knowing that there could have been protocols and technologies put in place earlier to prevent and contain the spread of this virus. Contact tracing systems, face mask protocols, social distance enforcement and regulatory systems among others would have been a big helping hand saved the lives of many resulting in a lower mortality rate and transfer rate.

The resources, methods and systems are available and all that is left is the integration process and the poise to translate these into a system that will greatly assist the healthcare workers in containing this and future spread of viruses and diseases.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a genetically mutated virus caused by a new strain of coronavirus (SARS-CoC-2) which has been identified in humans in the past. It was originally reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019. Just one month after this declaration, the WHO announced this initially minor outbreak as a global health emergency, and two months after, on 11 March, 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 A GLOBAL PANDEMIC, the first of its kind since declaring the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009. As of today, there is a staggering amount of 112 million cases worldwide, and unfortunately, 2.49 million deaths, most of which could have been avoided by taking the right measures and adopting the right technologies and protocols early enough in different states and countries. In Nigeria, there is a total number of 153 thousand cases and 1,874 confirmed deaths according to Google Trends and Statistics.

This pandemic is the number one pressing issue on the planet as of the moment. It is still spreading and there are now different variations to the virus which have proven to be either more fatal or more contagious. The main and most common symptoms of this disease are: fever; dry cough; and tiredness. Some lesser common symptoms are: aches and pains; sore throat; loss of taste or smell; etc. Furthermore, there are more serious symptoms in severe cases which include: difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; chest pain or pressure; or loss of speech or movement.