AI Tracker: Artificial intelligence for healthcare—and kitchen organisation

A weekly showcase of the far-reaching use-cases for AI today, plus new regulations from the US and EU

Sound technology

Amsterdam-based startup Lapsi Health is launching its AI-based stethoscope, named the Keikku, this week. While stethoscopes are an integral part of any medical practice, they remain technologically primitive — Lapsi wants to change that by

harnessing sound with AI. “The human body has more than 45 auscultatory points and more than 11 major types of pathologic sounds. It is an intrinsic language that delivers insights of health and disease, crucial for decision-making. We use stethoscopes to listen to these sounds,” the company explains on its website. The Keikku, an AI-embedded digital stethoscope, which recently got an USFDA approval, will make the sounds of the human body more accessible as a diagnostic tool, the company claims, transforming the conventional usage of auscultatory sounds in medicine into digital biomarkers.

Robots that zero in on objects that matter

MIT engineers have developed a new methodthat enables robots to quickly map a scene and identify the items they need to complete a given set of tasks, and makeintuitive, task-relevant decisions. The team's new approach, named Clio, enables a robot to identify the parts of a scene that matter given the tasks at hand — say, clearing a kitchen table by putting away utensils, tools, cooking ingredients. With Clio, a robot takes in a list of tasks described in natural language and, based on those tasks, determines the level of granularity required to interpret its surroundings and "remember" only the parts of a scene that are relevant. In real experiments ranging from a cluttered cubicle to a five-story building on MIT's campus, the team used Clio, embedded in a quadruped robot, to automatically segment a scene using natural-language prompts such as "move rack of magazines" and "get first aid kit," Science Daily reported. "Search and rescue is the motivating application for this work, but Clio can also power domestic robots and robots working on a factory floor alongside humans," said Luca Carlone, associate professor in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro).

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AI faces new regulation in California, EU

A new California law extends consumer privacy protection to brainwave data gathered by implants or wearable devices, AFP reported, classifying neural data as protected personal information along the lines of precise geolocation, genetics and biometrics. Protections under the California law include the right to know what brain data is being collected, limit its disclosure, and to be able to opt-out or have it deleted, even as technology companies, including billionaire Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink, strive to link brains and computers. The law applies to devices capable of recording or altering nervous system activity, whether they be implanted or worn. The potential for devices to tap into how people feel or think has raised concerns they could be used to manipulate feelings or thoughts. Meanwhile, the EU is also forging ahead with its proposed AI Act, the world's first comprehensive regulation of AI, and has created groups of experts to draw up the AI Act’s “code of practice”. The days of unregulated AI development seem to be drying up worldwide, and it’s time Indian lawmakers took note as well.

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