The Decentralized AI Alliance (DAIA) has announced the launch of #COVIDathon, a new hackathon designed to support the medical community in finding a solution against COVID-19, in order to prevent more people from dying and the virus from spreading even more.
COVIDathon, hosted by the hackathon portal DevPost, will officially start on April 1st and will last until June 1st, 2020.
The Decentralized AI Alliance is a new project created by the well-known company SingularityNET and the Ocean Protocol involving more than 50 companies.
Experts in genetics, medicine, blockchain, privacy and obviously artificial intelligence are invited to participate in the hackathon, which will last 8 weeks.
SingularityNET’s CEO, Dr Ben Goertzel, explains:
“It is imperative for those with AI expertise to help with the COVID-19 pandemic. From aiding with biomedicine and epidemiology to ensuring that data privacy is respected as the pandemic is tracked and studied, to creating democratically-evolving tools for sharing information and helping people cope — the number of ways AI can support in this unprecedented situation is vast”.
Bruce Pon, co-founder of the Ocean Protocol, states:
“The coronavirus is a relentless threat to people and the global economy. For the first time, the world is united against a common enemy. By freely sharing data and AI on a global scale, technologists can bring their special talents to bear and get ahead of this menace to defeat it”.
Dr Goertzel adds:
“The value of decentralized AI is especially powerful here, because only AI that’s developed and deployed in a decentralized way puts the tools for combating COVID-19 in the hands of the affected people themselves. To provide what’s needed on the time-scale demanded is going to require a coordinated effort across the AI development community which is why we’ve initiated COVIDathon”.
