Machine Learning Could Accelerate Coronavirus Research

Artificial intelligence is seeing increasing use in the field of medicine. Machine learning (ML) has the capability to analyse massive amounts of complex data, extracting information at a speed otherwise unattainable by humans.

ML has been used to identify promising drugs and analyse research papers. Now, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is urging researchers to use ML to analyse coronavirus articles, of which there are approximately 29000. This could help answer important questions about the origins of the virus, which could in turn aid in the development of treatments and a vaccine.

To achieve this goal, the White House office has partnered with Microsoft and Google to produce a database of coronavirus articles, which now contains around 13000 full entries, the remainder being partial texts.