Here are five uses for AI showcased at one of the world’s largest technology conferences, which ran in Lisbon from Nov 1-4 after last year’s edition was called off due to the pandemic.
1. Healthcare
When Iker Casillas learnt of a startup that uses AI to better detect irregular heart rhythms, he swiftly signed up as an investor. The Spanish football legend had suffered a heart attack in 2019, putting a brutal end to his career.
Madrid-based company Idoven analyses data from home heart-monitoring kits to track cardiac health and, crucially, to flag looming problems.
“We are the first company in the world capable of doing it,” its CEO Manuel Marina-Breysse said.
AI is also being used by a growing number of mental health startups. Woebot, a chatbot which people can use to unburden their anxieties, adapts its responses based on an AI-informed reading of the person’s emotional state.
“If somebody is in distress or they’re really not feeling great, Woebot will invite them to work on it or just get it off their chest,” explained its founder, Alison Darcy, a clinical research psychologist.
Some might find the idea of pouring one’s heart out to a chatbot unnerving, but the Silicon Valley startup says people sometimes prefer confiding in a robot to avoid the “baggage and social constructs” that come with human interactions – worrying that the other person will judge you, for instance.
2. Cutting waste
AI doesn’t represent a straightforward win for the climate. Training a single algorithm system can use nearly five times the emissions produced by a car over its lifetime, according to University of Massachusetts researchers.
But AI is also making a wide range of industrial processes more efficient, from cement production to cooling data centres. It could also be used to reduce the amount of garbage that is sent to landfills.
British startup Greyparrot uses AI to recognise different types of waste moving down a conveyor belt, picking out recyclables – from plastic to glass – better than the machines typically used at the moment.
3. Safer roads
Could AI stop road accidents? Irish startup Provizio is developing technology that uses machine learning to analyse data from sensors attached to a car.
In time, its founder Barry Lunn hopes this would allow emergency-braking systems to kick into gear 10 times more quickly.
4. Writing codes
The age of AI shunning all need of human help and writing its own computer code is closer than you might think. One initiative generating buzz in Lisbon was Copilot, a joint project by software development platform GitHub and research lab OpenAI.
The tool can auto-complete chunks of code, understanding the intentions of the human software engineer. But New York University researchers suggest the computers still need people: around 40% of the time, the code still has bugs in it.
5. Deepfakes
Recent years have seen growing alarm over deepfake technology, in which stunningly realistic likenesses of living people can be made to act as the creator pleases.
Deepfakes appearing to show actor Tom Cruise went viral earlier this year, prompting fresh questions over whether the technology could be used for fraud or even political manipulation.
Reface, an American startup founded by Ukrainians, wants to use deepfake AI for more playful purposes, allowing the user to swap Justin Bieber’s head, or the Mona Lisa’s, for their own.
But co-founder Ivan Altsybieiev imagines a future where people could mock up entire remakes of their favourite television shows, starring themselves – a “future where all content could be personalised”.