Tag: Google

Tech Giant Google has launched two new search functions powered by artificial intelligence (AI)

The two AI features, Circle to search and Multisearch in the lens, will enable users to engage with search functionalities in a more easy and meaningful way.

Elizabeth Reid, Vice President, Search said, “For more than two decades, we’ve continuously redefined what a search engine can do — always guided by our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

“This has gone hand in hand with our ongoing advancements in AI, which help us better understand information in its many forms — whether it’s text, audio, images or videos.

Read Also: Google’s top 10 most searched food recipes in Nigeria in 2023

“As part of this evolution, we’ve made it easier to express what you’re looking for in ways that are more natural and intuitive. For instance, you can search with your voice, or you can search with your camera using Lens.

“And recently, we’ve been testing how generative AI’s ability to understand natural language makes it possible to ask questions on Search in a more natural way.

“Ultimately, we envision a future where you can search anyway, anywhere you want. Now, as we enter 2024, we’re introducing two major updates that bring this vision closer to reality: Circle to Search and an AI-powered multisearch experience. Let’s take a look at what’s ahead.”

She said Circle to Search, is a new way to search anything on your Android phone screen without switching apps while Multisearch in Lens, pioneered in 2022 is a new way to search multimodally, with both images and text, by pointing your camera, asking a question, and getting help.

Every day across Africa, people turn to Google products like Search, YouTube and Fitbit for insights about their health and wellbeing. But many may not know that we have also been researching how AI can help improve healthcare outcomes for people, and how AI can empower our partners to deliver better health services — from improving maternal health outcomes to building useful digital tools for healthcare workers.

To mark the upcoming Africa HealthTech Summit in Kigali, Rwanda — an event that brings together a diverse group of digital health innovators and public health experts to share knowledge and ideas to help transform the healthcare landscape in Africa — here’s how we’re working with partners across Africa to research and explore new AI-powered healthcare tools.

1. Searching for skin conditions using images

Describing skin rashes or moles accurately using words alone can be challenging. Since earlier this year, users in the US and Japan have been able to use Google Lens to search for information about skin conditions with images instead of text. Now, this feature is being expanded to cover the entire African continent. People can simply capture a photo, upload it to Lens, and discover visually similar matches. This feature works well for those times where you’re not sure how to describe something on your body, like a bump on your lip, a line on your nails or hair loss on your head.

2. Improving maternal health outcomes in Kenya

Ultrasounds are effective in identifying potential issues in early pregnancy, but capturing and interpreting ultrasound is a complex medical imaging technique that requires years of training and experience. Due in part to a shortage of experts, up to 50% of pregnant people in low-resource settings do not receive ultrasound screenings during pregnancy. In our paper published last year, we show that AI models can make ultrasounds more accessible to lightly trained ultrasound operators in under-resourced settings. Now, we’re working with Jacaranda Health, a Kenyan nonprofit focused on improving health outcomes for mothers and babies in government hospitals, to validate the use of AI in clinical settings. Through this partnership, we’ll conduct research to understand the current approach to ultrasounds in Kenya and explore how new AI tools can support point-of-care ultrasound access for pregnant women.

3. Using Open Health Stack to build apps for healthcare workers

Across Africa, frontline health workers form a critical link between a community and the healthcare system. Unfortunately, they often face challenges around care coordination and data quality. To build mobile-first, technology-based healthcare solutions that enable better care, healthcare developers in Africa can now use Google’s Open Health Stack to build next-generation digital health tools. These tools make it easier to adopt the HL7 FHIR standard. To help upskill local developers, we partnered with Kabarak University and IntelliSOFT Consulting, to host our first Open Health Stack bootcamp in Kenya.

4. Screening for tuberculosis using AI 

According to the World Health Organisation, tuberculosis (TB) is the ninth leading cause of death worldwide, with over 25% of TB deaths occurring in Africa. While TB is treatable, it requires cost-effective screening solutions to help catch the disease early and reduce community spread. This year, Google partnered with an AI-based organization headed by Right to Care, a not-for-profit entity with extensive experience in TB care within Africa, to make AI-powered screenings widely available across Sub-Saharan Africa. Our partners have committed to performing 100,000 free AI-powered TB screenings during our collaboration.

5.  Supporting access to emergency obstetric care in Nigeria

According to recent estimates, though only 0.06% of annual global births occur in Nigeria; the country disproportionately contributes 28% of global maternal deaths every year,, and evidence shows that long travel times play a part in negative maternal outcomes. We recently released a tool in Nigeria, developed in collaboration with the OnTIME consortium, to help governments and public health organizations address challenges around accessing emergency obstetric care. By using Google’s internal directions API — the same API that powers navigation in Google Maps — decision makers can see data around average travel times to the nearest emergency obstetric facilities for different regions, which helps them better understand where expectant mothers may have limited geographic access to life-saving care.  

New search trends released by Google show that search interest in AI has reached an all-time high in Nigeria.

The trends show that people have searched for AI more than ever in 2023 so far, with interest rising 310% since last year, and by 1,660% in the last five years.

Google’s research also revealed the top trending questions being asked about AI across Nigeria.

Here, Google West Africa Director, Olumide Balogun answers some of the most frequently asked questions.

1.     What is Artificial Intelligence and how does it work?

AI is a type of technology that can learn from its environment, experiences and people, and that can understand patterns and make projections better than any previous technology before it.

AI models are trained and created by human engineers, who input data into the AI system to train it. For example, in 2012, we showed an AI model thousands of videos of cats on YouTube, so that it could learn to recognize a cat. Now, with advancements in technology, we could give an AI model hundreds of books on animals to read – and, using those, it would be able to describe a cat to us on its own despite having never been shown one.

Once AI systems are trained, they’re tested to see if they work well. You can do this by asking the AI model to describe or recognise a cat, for example, or even to generate a picture of one for you. Training AI models can take a long time – but once they work, they can be deployed into production so that you can use them at home.

2.     When did AI start?

AI can be traced back to the early 1950s when Alan Turing – a British mathematician – published a paper on “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”. That kick-started the principles behind AI – but the first time anyone used the term was likely in 1956 when John McCarthy hosted a conference at Dartmouth College called the Dartmouth Summer Research Project in Artificial Intelligence.

So AI is not new – in fact, AI research has been accelerating since the 1990s. Google itself became an AI-first company back in 2015. But the pace of AI development is accelerating – with more households able to access generative AI tools like text-to-image generators or chatbots – which has made AI a household phrase for maybe the first time ever.

3.     Where is AI used?

AI has always been integral to many daily tools, from Google Translate to antilock braking in cars. Its transformative power, however, is being harnessed more profoundly now. At the heart of this evolution is the Google AI Centre in Accra, laser-focused on Africa’s unique challenges and aspirations. While innovations like Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold impact global biotech, in Africa, we’re taking strides that resonate with local needs. We’re collaborating to map remote buildings for better planning, using AI to predict challenges like locust outbreaks, and enhancing maternal health via AI-powered ultrasound.

Read Also: Google appoints Alex Okosi MD for Africa

AI’s potential in sustainability is vast. In Africa, it’s about thriving industries that respect our rich biodiversity. While the global health community benefits from protein sequence mapping, for Africa, it’s a hope against diseases like malaria.

4.     What can AI do and how can I use it?

Think of AI as a tool that’s really good at understanding patterns and making projections – better than any computer has been before – and that’s been taught to learn from its environment, experiences and people. When you put that ability to good use, you can use AI to do all sorts of amazing things: like helping doctors to screen for and identify cancer, predicting and monitoring natural disasters, or helping businesses to identify and reduce their carbon emissions.

You’re probably using AI all the time already, without realising. But you can now also use AI to help boost your productivity with experimental language tools like Bard; to translate even more languages on Google Translate; or to find the most fuel-efficient route on Google Maps.

5.     Is AI dangerous?

AI is like any other technology in that it can be used for good or bad, depending on the user. On the one hand, it has incredible potential to be used in ways that are beneficial for society – whether it’s protecting people from spam and fraud, translating hundreds more languages, or forecasting floods up to seven days in advance. But it can also be used to amplify current societal issues – like misinformation and discrimination.

It’s really important that we get these tools right, working together to ensure we’re creating and using them responsibly. That means governments introducing regulations to help us seize the benefits of AI while mitigating the risks, as well as companies developing shared sets of standards and principles. At Google, we’re also led by our own AI Principles – which you can read online – to make sure we’re developing AI that is beneficial for society.

6.     Will AI take my job?

As technology has developed, so too has the job market. At the beginning of the last century, people mostly worked in agriculture. Now we have hedge fund managers, cabin crews aboard widely accessible commercial flights – and, as recently as 1995, web designers. So we’ve had these questions for a long time and, as a society, we’ve navigated them well.

That’s not to underestimate the potential of AI – which is essentially the ‘third wave’ of digital technology after the internet and mobile phones. It will be brilliant for people’s productivity and for economic opportunity – but it will also cause some levels of disruption. We’ll see a whole set of jobs that can grow – but the most profound change will be how many of our jobs will be assisted by technology.

AI will become a partner to many of us, helping us not just to make the repetitive tasks of our work more efficient, but sparking creativity and enabling us to spend more time on the bits of our jobs that we love and that challenge us. We’re already working with people to help them learn how AI can help them. Our Grow with Google programs have trained 7 million people and helped to close the digital skills gap in Africa. Governments, NGOs and the private sector can work together to bring similar schemes about – ensuring that everyone can benefit from AI.