C3.Ai Digital Transformation Institute | May 2020 Newsletter

Welcome to C3.ai DTIHow can we apply machine learning methods to inform public health policy without introducing bias? What genome-specific COVID-19 protocols do we need to establish and why? Can the science of digital transformation catalyze mechanisms to improve education, labor, or transportation? These are the questions that the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, launched last month by C3.ai, Microsoft, and leading research universities and labs, will ask over the coming years. With you, we intend to explore how the intertwining forces of artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, the internet of things, and big data analytics will affect and hopefully improve our economies, government policies, educational institutions, and societies.   In this inaugural newsletter, we share news of the Institute launch, our first call for proposals leveraging AI to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, and the opening of a COVID-19 “Data Lake.” Future newsletters will highlight Digital Transformation Institute research results, researcher recognitions and awards, events, and industry partnerships. We welcome your feedback and encourage you to engage with the Institute via social media or by contacting us directly.   Sincerely,

S. Shankar Sastry C3.ai DTI Co-Director UC BerkeleyR. Srikant C3.ai DTI Co-Director University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The C3.ai DTI ModelEstablished by C3.ai, Microsoft, and leading universities and laboratories—University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC—the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute is a research consortium dedicated to accelerating the application of artificial intelligence to speed the pace of digital transformation with business, government, and society. Made possible by a $367 million investment by C3.ai and Microsoft, the Institute sponsors and funds the world’s leading scientists to conduct advanced research in the new Science of Digital Transformation, which operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, internet of things, big data analytics, organizational behavior, public policy, and ethics. The Institute is jointly managed by UC Berkeley and UIUC; its chief scientists are Professors Costas Spanos and Tandy Warnow.   C3.ai DTI is immediately focused on AI to combat COVID-19 and prevent future pandemics. A call for proposals aims to fund over two dozen projects with approximately $73 million in cash awards and in-kind computing support from C3.ai and Microsoft. “We have the opportunity through public-private partnership to change the course of a global pandemic,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. “I cannot imagine a more important use of AI.”

Funded Research

Leveraging AI to Mitigate Effects of COVID-19Three newly funded projects will enable C3.ai DTI researchers to: 1) leverage AI and big data to model the spread of COVID-19 to inform intervention policies; 2) understand pandemic-driven evictions and housing insecurity; and 3) develop machine intelligence methods to aid in the interrogation of medical images from COVID-19 patients. Further awards will be announced by June 1.

C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake

C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake Publicly AvailableThe C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake, a unified source of comprehensive COVID-19 data and knowledge graphs, is available to researchers worldwide to accelerate pandemic mitigation. Said MIT Researcher Connor Makowski: “This data lake provides a comprehensive interconnected data model. Previously disconnected data sources can easily be integrated—including time series data—with a single, simple API request. Navigating, pulling, and aggregating data like country statistics, patient diagnosis, age, and even time-based location movements can be done in minutes instead of days or weeks.”

Blogs

Unifying AI: Big Data Front to Fight COVID-19Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai and Chair of DTI’s Advisory Board, writes in launching the COVID-19 Data Lake: “I am confident that the largest commercial application of AI will be precision medicine: disease prediction, genome-specific medical protocols, and AI-assisted diagnosis will result in greater availability of more efficacious medical care at lower cost. It is clear that there is a ripe opportunity to apply Enterprise AI to mitigate the global COVID-19 crisis…. Experts estimate that data scientists spend up to 90% of their time and effort ‘wrangling’ data so that the data are in a form that is accessible for analysis. In the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake, we have done all of that work.”

News

A.I. Versus the Coronavirus, New York Times Siebel on Anonymizing Data, Wall Street Journal Tom Siebel on CNBC Squawk Alley, CNBC C3.ai, Microsoft help launch the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, ZDNet AI Companies That Are Combatting the Coronavirus Pandemic, Forbes Using AI to Analyze Coronavirus Data, Federal News Network A Unified Big Data Front to Fight COVID-19, Enterprise AI Siebel Still Setting a High Bar in the AI World, Upstream How Will Coronavirus Change the Health-Care Industry, National Review The U.S. Now Has the Most Coronavirus Cases in the World, Fortune COVID-19 Vaccine Developers Gain Access to Supercomputers, The Scientist AI Research Collaborative Targets COVID-19, Health IT Analytics The Race to Find a Coronavirus Treatment Has One Major Obstacle, Guardian

About the C3.ai Digital Transformation InstituteEstablished by C3.ai, Microsoft, and leading universities and laboratories—University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC—the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute is a research consortium dedicated to accelerating the application of artificial intelligence to speed the pace of digital transformation with business, government, and society. C3.ai DTI sponsors and funds the world’s leading scientists to conduct advanced research in the new Science of Digital Transformation, which operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, internet of things, big data analytics, organizational behavior, public policy, and ethics.