Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has gifted US$4 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) to Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) to support the development of an artificial intelligence-based pandemic detection tool:
Buterin’s donation will underwrite the Shiba Inu Open-Source Intelligence-based EPIWATCH tool, which utilises AI and open-source data to create early pandemic warnings.
It’s all part of what Buterin describes as his “moonshot anti-Covid effort”, in partnership with the Shiba Inu memecoin project and the Crypto Relief fund, which was launched during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India last year.
Tool Scans Online Data for Covid Updates
EPIWATCH is the brainchild of Raina MacIntyre, professor and biosecurity research head at UNSW’s Kirby Institute, based at the university’s Sydney campus. The tool can scan millions of items of publicly available online data, including social media and news reports, to detect any changes that could suggest increasing Covid-related health concerns.
MacIntyre says the aim was to make the tool accessible at a “grassroots” level and make sure it covers enough languages to reach “villages and small towns around the world”. MacIntyre also eluded that “Imagine if someone had detected Covid-19 before it spread around the world – that is our vision. Using AI and real-time open-source data, EPIWATCH does not depend on people making reports. It is a great equaliser and can overcome weak health systems and censorship.”
Open-Source Approach Accelerates Pandemic Detection
In announcing his donation to the project, Buterin stressed the importance of sharing data in a decentralised and open manner to speed up pandemic detection:
[It’s] an excellent alternative to more intrusive forms of monitoring, which are also often only available to governments and other high bidders but closed to the public. By contrast, an open-source and open-access approach that allows researchers to work collaboratively across the world can be more easily improved and scaled to detect new pandemics wherever they begin.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder
Australian universities are at the forefront of crypto-related research designed to benefit humanity. Earlier this month, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University launched its Green Cryptocurrency Laboratory, which will focus on reducing crypto’s carbon footprint.
And last year, in response to an outbreak of fake Covid-19 vaccine certificates circulating on the web, Australian medical specialists called for a nationwide roll-out of a blockchain-based vaccine certificate system.
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