Latin Americans can now hail drivers with the assurance that Didi verifies their rides. Drivers in their market now use artificial intelligence for verification of added safety and security measures against the transmission of the coronavirus.

Added security measures on Didi for safer rides

Eight countries in the region started adapting to this system along with Australia and Japan to better combat a resurgence from happening. Since SoftBank Group in Japan is one of Didi's stakeholders, they announced that they would roll out the AI to its markets abroad.

Starting May 22, Didi's drivers in Latin America will verify their ride by taking a selfie with a face mask. By June, they will input their body temperature and upload photos of disinfecting their ride-hailing vehicle.

Failure to comply with these safety guidelines may be prohibited from service of the ride-hailing app to clients. At the same time, passengers are required to wear masks and come into the vehicle on a limited capacity, according to an official statement by the Didi company.

If either the driver and the passenger feel unsafe about the conditions of the ride, Didi allowed the option to cancel the trip.

Because of social distancing and home isolation orders, other ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft across the world have seen a steep decline in their revenue. However, as more businesses start reopening, they try to regain most of what they lost during the earlier part of the year.

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AI tool detects "wet lungs" from patients

The future is now: Researchers studying artificial intelligence in the United States and China developed a tool that can predict which coronavirus patients are most vulnerable to severe lung disorders. The algorithm the system uses will be able to allow medical experts to decide which ill patients to treat earlier.

The AI was able to detect indicators that were consistently suggestive of conditions that patients shared who would later on develop "acute respiratory disease syndrome". It was one of the severe health complications of COVID-19 that fills the organ with fluid. Surviving that condition would only be a 50/50 chance.

Physician and professor at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine Megan Coffee said the AI was developed for healthcare institutions who were facing a shortage of resources amid the pandemic. She was also one of the authors of the study in Computers, Materials & Continua.

During the trial, they applied a constantly learning algorithm to collect and analyze data gathered from over fifty patients in Wenzhou, China. The AI discovered that there were three key features in the body that set some patients apart from the rest. The liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase, body aches, and hemoglobin were found to be highly indicative of a severe lung disease like ARDS.

According to Coffee, characteristics that clinicians used to look at factors of severe diseases were different from the data of the AI. For instance, doctors would consider patterns of lung images with "ground-glass opacity" a precursor to a health complication like ARDS.