Artificial intelligence and COVID-19: fighting pandemics

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a computer-based technology that has the ability to learn and intelligently perform given tasks. AI-based services have already become a natural part of human life. As the significance of using these technologies is getting more recognized over time, they continuously give promising results to not only solve the current problems but also identify the possible problems of future. If these services can be used in this way, they may even surpass human solutions in different landscapes. Managing pandemic is one of them. At present, the new issues arising from the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the world have become an important part of AI services for social good. These services have already shown promising results regarding healthcare in different landscapes such as early diagnosis, tracking the spread of virus, monitoring patients, relieving the overload on healthcare workers, identifying high-risk groups, and raising awareness about self-hygiene. However, most of the issues related to fighting against COVID-19 at a global level show that use of AI technologies in such disease prevention or public health management is still very limited. AI technologies could be more functional in the management of such crisis when they become part of intelligent healthcare systems and a requirement for the management systems of any potential pandemic in the future. The purpose of this chapter is to provide consistent knowledge to stakeholders regarding the critical issues and to analyze how AI-based solutions could be used for fighting against pandemics. Therefore using AI services in the management of COVID-19 pandemic is examined in four main phases: prevention, preparation, response, and recovery. Next, critical issues, ethical uses of those services, and the latest learned lessons were discussed. Then the existing gaps in fighting pandemics are presented together with the concluding remarks, where suggestions of relevant AI systems and how AI can help in fighting against pandemics are summarized.