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HELSINKI (AP) Finland is offering a techy Christmas gift to all European Union citizens a free-of-charge online course in artificial intelligence in their own language, officials said Tuesday.

The tech-savvy Nordic nation, led by the 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin, is marking the end of its rotating presidency of the EU at the end of the year with a highly ambitious goal.

Instead of handing out the usual ties and scarves to EU officials and journalists, the Finnish government has opted to give practical understanding of AI to 1% of EU citizens, or about 5 million people, through a basic online course by the end of 2021.

It is teaming up with the University of Helsinki, Finlands largest and oldest academic institution, and the Finland-based tech consultancy Reaktor.

Teemu Roos, a University of Helsinki associate professor in the department of computer science, described the nearly $2 million project as a civics course in AI to help EU citizens cope with societys ever-increasing digitalization and the possibilities AI offers in the jobs market.

The course covers elementary AI concepts in a practical way and doesnt go into deeper concepts like coding, he said.

We have enormous potential in Europe but what we lack is investments into AI, Roos said, adding that the continent faces fierce AI competition from digital giants like China and the United States.

The initiative is paid for by the Finnish ministry for economic affairs and employment, and officials said the course is meant for all EU citizens whatever their age, education or profession.

Since its launch in Finland in 2018 The Elements of AI has been phenomenally successful the most popular course ever offered by the University of Helsinki, which traces its roots back to 1640 with more than 220,000 students from over 110 countries having taken it so far online, Roos said.

A quarter of those enrolled so far are aged 45 and over, and some 40% are women. The share of women is nearly 60% among Finnish participants - a remarkable figure in the male-dominated technology domain.

Consisting of several modules, the online course is meant to be completed in about six weeks full time - or up to six months on a lighter schedule - and is currently available in Finnish, English, Swedish and Estonian.

Together with Reaktor and local EU partners, the university is set to translate it to the remaining 20 of the EUs official languages in the next two years.

Megan Schaible, COO of Reaktor Education, said during the projects presentation in Brussels last week that the company decided to join forces with the Finnish university to prove that AI should not be left in the hands of a few elite coders.

An official University of Helsinki diploma will be provided to those passing and Roos said many EU universities would likely give credits for taking the course, allowing students to include it in their curriculum.

For technology aficionados, the University of Helsinkis computer science department is known as the alma mater of Linus Torvalds, the Finnish software engineer who developed the Linux operating system during his studies there in the early 1990s.

In September, Google set up its free-of-charge Digital Garage training hub in the Finnish capital with the intention of helping job-seekers, entrepreneurs and children to brush up their digital skills including AI.

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Finland offers crash course in artificial intelligence to EU - The Associated Press

Riiid claims students can increase their scores by 20 percent or more with just 20 hours of study. It has already incorporated machine-learning algorithms into its program to prepare students for English-language proficiency tests and has introduced test prep programs for the SAT. It expects to enter the United States in 2020.

Still more transformational applications are being developed that could revolutionize education altogether. Acuitus, a Silicon Valley start-up, has drawn on lessons learned over the past 50 years in education cognitive psychology, social psychology, computer science, linguistics and artificial intelligence to create a digital tutor that it claims can train experts in months rather than years.

Acuituss system was originally funded by the Defense Departments Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for training Navy information technology specialists. John Newkirk, the companys co-founder and chief executive, said Acuitus focused on teaching concepts and understanding.

The company has taught nearly 1,000 students with its course on information technology and is in the prototype stage for a system that will teach algebra. Dr. Newkirk said the underlying A.I. technology was content-agnostic and could be used to teach the full range of STEM subjects.

Dr. Newkirk likens A.I.-powered education today to the Wright brothers early exhibition flights proof that it can be done, but far from what it will be a decade or two from now.

The world will still need schools, classrooms and teachers to motivate students and to teach social skills, teamwork and soft subjects like art, music and sports. The challenge for A.I.-aided learning, some people say, is not the technology, but bureaucratic barriers that protect the status quo.

There are gatekeepers at every step, said Dr. Sejnowski, who together with Barbara Oakley, a computer-science engineer at Michigans Oakland University, created a massive open online course, or MOOC, called Learning How to Learn.

He said that by using machine-learning systems and the internet, new education technology would bypass the gatekeepers and go directly to students in their homes. Parents are figuring out that they can get much better educational lessons for their kids through the internet than theyre getting at school, he said.

Craig S. Smith is a former correspondent for The Times and hosts the podcast Eye on A.I.

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The Machines Are Learning, and So Are the Students - The New York Times

December 17, 2019 -Seventy-nine percent of healthcare professionals indicate that artificial intelligence tools have helped mitigate clinician burnout, suggesting that the technology enables providers to deliver more engaging, patient-centered care, according to a survey conducted by MIT Technology Review and GE Healthcare.

As artificial intelligence tools have slowly made their way into the healthcare industry, many have voiced concerns that the technology will remove the human aspect of patient care, leaving individuals in the care of robots and machines.

Healthcare institutions have been anticipating the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on the performance and efficiency of their operations and their workforcesand the quality of patient care, the report stated.

Contrary to common, yet unproven, fears that machines will replace human workers, AI technologies in health care may actually be re-humanizing healthcare, just as the system itself shifts to value-based care models that may favor the outcome patients receive instead of the number of patients seen.

Through interviews with over 900 healthcare professionals, researchers found that providers are already using AI to improve data analysis, enable better treatment and diagnosis, and reduce administrative burdensall of which free up clinicians time to perform other tasks.

READ MORE: Using Artificial Intelligence to Strengthen Suicide Prevention

Numerous technologies are in play today to allow healthcare professionals to deliver the best care, increasingly customized to patients, and at lower costs, the report said.

Our survey has found medical professionals are already using AI tools, to improve both patient care and back-end business processes, from increasing the accuracy of oncological diagnosis to increasing the efficiency of managing schedules and workflow.

The survey found that medical staff with pilot AI projects spend one-third less time writing reports, while those with extensive AI programs spend two-thirds less time writing reports. Additionally, 45 percent of participants said that AI has helped increase consultation time, as well as time to perform surgery and other procedures.

For those with the most extensive AI rollouts, 70 percent expect to spend more time performing procedures than doing administrative or other work.

AI is being used to assume many of a physicians more mundane administrative responsibilities, such as taking notes or updating electronic health records, researchers said. The more AI is deployed, the less time doctors spend at their computers.

READ MORE: Patient, Provider Support Key to Healthcare Artificial Intelligence

Respondents also indicated that AI is helping them gain an edge in the healthcare market. Eighty percent of business and administrative healthcare professionals said that AI is helping them improve revenue opportunities, while 81 percent said they think AI will make them more competitive providers.

The report also showed that AI-related projects will continue to receive an increasing portion of healthcare spending now and in the future. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said they will be spending more to develop AI applications.

Respondents also indicated that AI has increased the operational efficiency of healthcare organizations. Seventy-eight percent of healthcare professionals said that their AI deployments have already created workflow improvements in areas including schedule management.

Using AI to optimize schedule management and other administrative tasks creates opportunities to leverage AI for more patient-facing applications, allowing clinicians to work with patients more closely.

AIs core value proposition is in both improving diagnosing abilities and reducing regulatory and data complexities by automating and streamlining workflow. This allows healthcare professionals to harness the wealth of insight the industry is generating, without drowning in it, the report said.

READ MORE: GE Launches Program to Ease Artificial Intelligence Adoption

AI has also helped healthcare professionals reduce clinical errors. Medical staff who dont use AI cited fighting clinical error as a key challenge two-thirds of the timemore than double that of medical staff who have AI deployments.

Additionally, advanced tools are helping users identify and treat clinical issues. Seventy-five percent of respondents agree that AI has enabled better predictions in the treatment of disease.

AI-enabled decision-support algorithms allow medical teams to make more accurate diagnoses, researchers noted.

This means doing something big by doing something really small: noticing minute irregularities in patient information. That could be the difference between acting on a life-threatening issueor missing it.

While AI has shown a lot of promise in the industry, the technology still comes with challenges. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that integrating AI applications into existing systems is challenging, and more than half of professionals planning to deploy AI raise concerns about medical professional adoption, support from top management, and technical support.

To overcome these challenges, researchers recommended that clinical staff collaborate to implement and deploy AI tools.

AI needs to work for healthcare professionals as part of a robust, integrated ecosystem. It needs to be more than deploying technologyin fact, the more humanized the application of AI is, the more it will be adopted and improve results and return on investment. After all, in healthcare, the priority is the patient, researchers concluded.

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Humanizing the Healthcare Industry - HealthITAnalytics.com

KIBBUTZ SHEFAYIM, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zebra Medical Vision, the deep learning medical imaging analytics company, announces today a global co-development and commercialization agreement with DePuy Synthes* to bring Artificial Intelligence (AI) opportunities to orthopaedics, based on imaging data.

Every year, millions of orthopaedic procedures worldwide use traditional two-dimensional (2D) CT scans or MRI imaging to assist with pre-operative planning. CT scans and MRI imaging can be expensive, and CT scans are associated with more radiation and are uncomfortable for some patients. Zebra-Meds technology uses algorithms to create three-dimensional (3D) models from X-ray images. This technology aims to bring affordable pre-operative surgical planning to surgeons worldwide without the need for traditional MRI or CT-based imaging.

We are thrilled to start this collaboration and have the opportunity to impact and improve orthopaedic procedures and outcomes in areas including the knee, hip, shoulder, trauma, and spine care, says Eyal Gura, Co-Founder and CEO of Zebra Medical Vision. We share a common vision surrounding the impact we can have on patients lives through the use of AI, and we are happy to initiate such a meaningful strategic partnership, leveraging the tools and knowledge we have built around bone health AI in the last five years.

This technology is planned to be introduced as part of DePuy Synthes VELYS Digital Surgery solutions for pre-operative, operative, and post-operative patient care.

Read more on Zebra-Meds blog: https://zebramedblog.wordpress.com/another-dimension-to-zebras-ai-how-we-impact-the-orthopedic-world

About Zebra Medical VisionZebra Medical Visions imaging analytics platform allows healthcare institutions to identify patients at risk of disease and offer improved, preventative treatment pathways, to improve patient care. The company is funded by Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff, Intermountain Investment Fund, OurCrowd Qure, Aurum, aMoon, Nvidia, Johnson & Johnson Innovation JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) and Dolby Ventures. Zebra Medical Vision has raised $52 million in funding to date, and was named a Fast Company Top-5 AI and Machine Learning company. Zebra-Med is a global leader in AI FDA cleared products, and is installed in hospitals globally, from Australia to India, Europe to the U.S, and the LATAM region.

*Agreement is between DePuy Ireland Unlimited Company and Zebra Medical Vision.

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Zebra Medical Vision Announces Agreement With DePuy Synthes to Deploy Cloud Based Artificial Intelligence Orthopaedic Surgical Planning Tools -...

Artificial Intelligence has had many breakthroughs in 2019. In fact, we can go as far as to say that it has trickled down to every single facet of modern life. With its intervention in our daily life, it is imperative that everyone knows about how it is affecting our lives, bringing about change in it, the threats and possible solutions.

While there are some people who still think AI is only robots and chatbots, it is important that they know of the advancements in the field. There are many online courses and books on artificial intelligence that give a comprehensive understanding to the reader whether it is a professional or an AI enthusiast.

In this article, we have compiled a list of books on artificial intelligence published in 2019 that one can use to learn more about this fascinating technology:

Written by Dr Eric Topol, an American cardiologist, geneticist and digital medicine researcher, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again, is Amazon #1 bestseller this year.

This book boldly sets out the potential of AI in healthcare and deep medicine. Topol calls AI the next industrial revolution. The book contains short examples to highlight AIs importance along with a proper expansion on likely AI is going to transform the medical industry. Topol believes that AI can not only help in enhancing diagnosis and treatment but also help them in saving time in other activities like taking notes, reading scans which will eventually help them to spend more time on the patients. This is a resourceful book for someone interested in AI and its impact on healthcare.

Written by Dr Stuart Russell, Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control is possibly one of the most important books of this year on AI. The book talks about the threats by artificial intelligence and solutions to it. The author, Stuart Russell, makes use dry humour not to make his book sound like a boring information magazine.

The book is for both the public and AI researches, Stuart Russel, in this doesnt hammer AI, he points out the threats and solution as someone who feels a sense of responsibility towards the changes and revolution his own field is bringing.

This book is written by Marcus du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and a researcher fellow at the Royal Society.

This book is a fact-packed, funny journey to the world of AI. It questions the present meaning of the word creativity and about how the machine will be able to crack the code on human emotions.

This book dances around the concept of using AI assistance in art-making. The book discusses the math behind ML and AI as its centre point of discussion in art.

Janelle Shanes AIwierdness.com is an AI humour blog and looks to have a different take on AI, the part of AI. In this book, the author makes use of humorous cartoons and pop-culture illustrations to try and take a look inside the algorithms that are used in machine learning.

The authors of this book Gary Marcus, a scientist and the founder and CEO of Robust.AI and Ernest Davis, a professor of computer science at NYU tell what AI is, what it is not, its potentials if we worked towards it with more resilience and be more creative. Many authors seem to hype up AI, not just the good part about it but also the wrong side about it. The authors here seem to have found the balance in between.

The book, Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust, highlights the weaknesses of the current technology, where it is going wrong and what should we be doing to find the solutions. It isnt just some book that only researchers can read but also for the general public. It illustrates many examples and excellent use of humour wherever needed.

The first edition of the series of books written by the Alex Castrounis, answer one of the most critical questions in todays age concerning business and AI, How can I build a successful business by using AI?

The AI for People and Business: A Framework for Better Human Experiences and Business Success is exclusively written for anyone interested in making use of AI in their organisation.

The author examines the value of Ai and gives solutions for developing an AI strategy that benefits both people and businesses.

This book by Andriy Burkov remains true to its name and just manages to do the seemingly impossible task of trying to bundle all of the machine learning inside of a hundred-page book.

This book provides an in-depth introduction to the field of machine learning with the smart choice of topics for both theory and practice.

If you are new to the field of machine learning, then this book gives you a comprehensive introduction to the vocabulary/ terminology.

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Top Artificial Intelligence Books Released In 2019 That You Must Read - Analytics India Magazine