Everyone is coming together to collaborate under the common goal of fighting the spread of COVID-19, including the emerging technology programs across the federal government. Federal News Network brought this information to our attention in their article, “Emerging tech offices come together on long-term plan to combat coronavirus.”

Some agencies have spent a considerable amount of time fielding artificial intelligence (AI) for projects much less ambitious than a global pandemic. AI and other tools such as supercomputing and advanced data analytics are in the game.

William Scherlis, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Information Innovation Office, said DARPA’s work in artificial intelligence is “actively supporting the current response to the novel coronavirus.

According to William Scherlis, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Information Innovation Office, “AI is actually playing a significant role in addressing the challenges, most immediately processing data, developing predictive models when the data is coming in from diverse sources, trying to get some harmony in that data, despite the quantity and diversity coming from all over the world.”

While DARPA continues to push the envelope of technological breakthroughs, Scherlis cautioned that AI has a valuable, but limited role, in responding to the current pandemic.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.