“Several high-end senior homes in New York City are using AI-powered motion sensors to detect and prevent falls—a leading cause of injury and death among the elderly. The sensors monitor movement, sleep, and vital signs to spot early warning signs and alert staff instantly. At one Upper East Side residence, falls dropped by 40 percent after the system was introduced,” notes The Doomslayer.
The New York Times reports:
Today’s anti-fall technology has come a long way from the emergency alert systems of the late 1980s, when Mrs. Fletcher uttered her iconic TV-commercial cry: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” That kind of pendant or bracelet, or even a voice-activated system, is useless for someone who is injured, unconscious or too weak to trigger it.
Now, the A.I. technology is being rolled out in some of New York City’s high-end senior living facilities, as well as nationwide. (These facilities don’t come cheap: At the Bristal, rates start at $14,500 a month for a studio.) The sensors are typically mounted high on the wall and capture the movements of the person or people inside, sending real-time information to staff members — meaning the residents don’t have to do anything to summon help.
The system also helps identify fall risk using mattress sensors to monitor vital signs like respiration and heart rate, and stores data to keep a record of an individual’s regular movements as a way to identify aberrations. Designated staff members receive daily health information showing statistically significant changes.
At the Bristal, falls have declined by 40 percent since the detection system was introduced several years ago, Ms. Sosnow said. In one case, a woman with a history of falling at home took a tumble within a week of arrival. The system showed she was getting little sleep, so a doctor was able to prescribe something to help.
Artificial intelligence is also improving weather forecasts and increasing the size of harvests. “This summer, India’s Ministry of Agriculture oversaw an impressive real world trial of AI-powered weather forecasts. The project sent weekly monsoon predictions to 38 million farmers using an AI model. During the trial, this new AI system accurately predicted an unusual 20-day dry spell weeks before it happened—something none of the conventional systems managed to do,” reports The Doomslayer.
Artificial intelligence is also helping African farmers. Kenyan farmers have substantially increased their harvests and reduced fertilizer costs, by using a chatbot with artificial intelligence to advise them about things like how much fertilizer to use. This artificial intelligence tool yields much more accurate information than advice from government agricultural extension offices. It also yields faster, cheaper results than sending soil samples to distant private soil labs. Kenyan soil labs can take months to provide farmers with test results, leaving farmers in the dark as they make critical decisions about planting and fertilizer use.
The impoverished African nation of Zambia has used artificial intelligence to find new mineral wealth.
Artificial intelligence is also greatly improving the detection of many different diseases.
