CityU & TFI Seminar – AI for Better Health and Wealth

The Department of Computer Science (CS) of City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and TFI Digital Media Limited (TFI) had established a joint research centre “TFI Applied Research Centre for Advanced Digital Media Technology” to carry out research in advanced digital media technology.  They coorganized TFI Technology Tuesday (TTT) Seminar Series – AI for Better Health and Wealth on 9^th Apr 2019.  Before the seminar, Mr. Soon Wei Hung briefed the joint research centre background.

The first speaker was Mr. Soon Wei Hung (Assistant Director, Product and Business Development, TFI Digital Media Limited) and his topic entitled “Concepts of AI Technology and Demo Application” Mr. Soon said AI the first coined in 1956. AI Goal is to “Make machines solve problems that are now reserved for humans.” (John McCarthy (1927-2011))

Then he introduced the history of AI included two AI winters.  Since Big Data and High-Performance Computing appear, we are in the Third Hype of AI.

And then Mr. Soon briefed the key technology of AI and which advancement was from Machine Learning (1980s) to Deep Learning (2010s). 

The following diagram showed the different between traditional machine learning and deep learning.  The key element is in feature extraction.  Deep learning made breakthrough in computer vision since 2012 and outperforms human in 2015. 

“Wide Neural Networks of Any Depth Evolve as Linear Models under Gradient Descent” (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.06720.pdf) was the first deep learning theory which published by Google AI in Feb 2019. Mr. Soon said that AI Technology achieved today included Classification (e.g. Computer Vision), Model (Predict/NLP) (e.g. Statistical Relationship) and Generation (e.g. Creating New Things)

Lastly, he demonstrated how to creating a new faces. (A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks) 

The second speaker was Prof. Chun, Hon Wai Andy (Regional Director, Technology Innovation, Prudential Corporation Asia; Adjunct Professor, CityU CS) and his topic named “AI for Better Health and Wealth”.  Firstly, he played a video to introduce Prudential “We are the people that DO”. 

Then Prof. Chun briefed the world population increase exponentially and life expectancy increasing. The following table showed Hong Kong had highest longevity rates.

He stated that World Bank and WHO reported half the world lacks access to essential health services, 100 million still pushed into extreme poverty because of health expenses. A news said 42% of Americans were at risk of retiring broke. The following diagram showed 1 in 3 Americans without saving after retirement.

Similar situation in Hong Kong on financially unprepared for retirement and death was reported in South China Morning Post. 

Prof. Chung identified three challenges to Health and Wealth below:

1.      Aging population

2.      Shortage/expensive healthcare

3.      Financially unprepared for retirement

He proposed a solution using an virtual “life coach” to drive behavioral changes through personalized “nudges” to help people stay healthy/wealthy through better habits.

After that he also demonstrated the video named myDNA for this purpose which was developed by our colleague Prof. Micheal Yang. 

Finally, Prof. Chung showed AI Doctor to assist both patient and Doctor diagnostic named “The most powerful AI for healthcare - Babylon Health”, 

and “Babylon AI Event June 27^th 2018 Portal Demo”.

Reference:

CityU CS - https://www.cs.cityu.edu.hk/

TFI - https://www.tfidm.com/us/en/about

Joint Research Centre news: https://www.cs.cityu.edu.hk/news/news/CityU-TFI-Research-Centre.pdf

(Remark: TFI stands for Technology Fun Innovation)

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