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Chapter 34 - Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Global Health

Ethical Challenges and Opportunities

from Section 6 - Shaping the Future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

By
Effy Vayena  and
Agata Feretti
Edited by
Solomon Benatar  and
Gillian Brock
Solomon Benatar
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Cape Town
Gillian Brock
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of Auckland
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Summary

The development of new information technologies has accelerated the pace with which data are collected, stored, and processed. As a result, the term big data came to life describing large and disparate data collections. Data at large scale provided a new, important resource on which powerful computational technologies and new analytical capabilities can be deployed to glean various kinds of information. More recently, a new repertoire of methods labeled artificial intelligence (AI) has added speed and accuracy in pattern identification and the generation of other inferences from such data. AI-based applications have been accompanied by enormous enthusiasm about the possibilities to solve a variety of problems in all aspects of life. However, most AI-based applications are currently narrow in scope: they are adopted to carry out specific tasks and to solve limited and predetermined problems (Mesko, 2017).

Type
Chapter
Information
Global Health
Ethical Challenges
 , pp. 429 - 439
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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