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Pfizer Injects AI Into Vaccine Trials; Smart Algorithms Navigate Supply Chains
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Welcome back. Artificial intelligence is set to take a decisive role in shaping the post-pandemic economy, from helping employers reopen workplaces to getting supply chains back on track. Corporate technology leaders and industry analysts offered these and other insights at last week’s virtual edition of the WSJ Pro AI Executive Forum. Some of their views are outlined in the sections below. One broad takeaway: Though still in its infancy, AI is already having a profound impact on our daily lives.
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A married couple in the U.K. received a Pfizer-BioNTech shot on Monday.
PHOTO: VICTORIA JONES/PA WIRE/ZUMA PRESS
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Pfizer’s Speedy Vaccine Rollout
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Pfizer Inc. last year developed AI-powered dashboards designed to monitor the effect of Covid-19 on clinical trials in real time, ultimately helping the pharmaceutical giant roll out its coronavirus vaccination in less than a year, The Wall Street Journal’s Sara Castellanos reports.
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A shot in the arm. Pfizer fed large amounts of case-rate data into AI-enabled predictive models to quickly generate site selection for clinical trials, said Lidia Fonseca, the company’s chief digital and technology officer.
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A smart move. Pfizer two years ago began experimenting with the emerging technologies, focusing on digital tools that promised to offer better outcomes for patients, doctors and employees, with results it was able to draw on during the pandemic, Ms. Fonseca said.
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Supply Chain Optimization
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The container ship Ever Given last week after being freed from high ground in the Suez Canal.
PHOTO: KHALED ELFIQI/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Companies leaned heavily on AI to cope with the added challenge of forecasting demand and optimizing their supply chains, a strategy that was tested again last month when a cargo ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking a major global shipping route for days, WSJ’s James Rundle reports.
Prepare for the worst. AI is a useful tool to quickly figure out how to reroute shipments and plan for extreme events by building redundancy into operations through multiple distribution facilities, according to Mario Harik, chief information officer at XPO Logistics Inc.
A sea of data. As a logistics provider, Mr. Harik said, “we are very much in the data business,” citing data-heavy areas like the intake and outbound flow at various distribution centers.
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“This groundwork helped us to be as ready as we could when the pandemic hit.”
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— Pfizer Inc. Chief Digital and Technology Officer Lidia Fonseca on the company's pre-Covid investments in AI.
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At right, Adam Stanley, chief information officer and chief digital officer of Cushman & Wakefield, talks with the WSJ's Steven Rosenbush at the virtual WSJ Pro AI Executive Forum.
PHOTO: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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The rapid pace of Covid-19 inoculations is prompting a growing number of businesses to start planning a safe return to the workplace, with many turning to AI-enabled software to oversee the process, WSJ Pro AI reports.
Safer buildings. Adam Stanley, chief information officer and chief digital officer at Cushman & Wakefield PLC, says office managers are using AI to power contact tracing, health check-ins, contagion-risk alerts and social-distancing notifications that flag overcrowded office floors or conference rooms.
Hybrid strategy. Companies are also increasingly likely to adopt a hybrid model that splits employees’ time between in-person and remote work, with a greater reliance on the role of smaller, satellite offices, Mr. Stanley said.
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Though impressive, most business-world applications of AI are in early stages with real-world results still years away as companies take a cautious approach to replacing tried-and-true processes with smart algorithms, WSJ reports.
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Cannot rush a robot. Like this early General Motors Co. factory-floor robot, transformative technology can take years to change business models and yield real-world results, said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
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Slow and steady. Companies leading the charge in adopting AI tools and platforms are taking time to target spending in the right digital capabilities and talent, Mr. Brynjolfsson said.
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44%
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The percentage of 2,200 U.S. workers recently surveyed by the Conference who said they didn’t know their company’s plans to return to the workplace.
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Rep. Jerry McNerney speaking in the House of Representatives in 2019.
PHOTO: HOUSE TV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Lawmaker presses for national privacy law. California Democrat Jerry McNerney, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says data-privacy legislation is a priority in Congress this year and that members on both sides of the aisle want to see something done. (The Wall Street Journal)
AI workers in high demand. U.S. employers added 50,000 new information-technology workers last month as more pandemic-era tech measures become permanent, with especially sought-after talent in areas like business-workflow automation and analytics. (The Wall Street Journal)
Algorithms enlisted to fight melanoma. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing neural networks that can help detect melanoma by quickly analyzing wide-field images of patients’ skin to scan for malignant tumors. (MIT News)
Software tool designs antibiotics. An AI system developed by International Business Machines Corp. programmed to design molecules for new antibiotics recently generated two bacteria-killing antimicrobial peptides, which proved effective against pathogens in mice. (Vox)
AI along the watchtower. Over the Bridge, a Toronto support group for music-industry workers struggling with mental illness, is releasing machine learning-generated songs matching the style of deceased artists like Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain by analyzing their discography for patterns in lyrics, melodies, chord changes, rhythm and solos. (Rolling Stone)
When you’re happy does it know it? A University of Cambridge-led research team is using online games to demonstrate the limits and risks of emotion-recognition software, in part by encouraging users to fool the technology by making faces. (The Guardian)
Robots for the cocktail-party set. Researchers are using images of art, digital museum collections and other online sources to teach neural networks how to identify and talk about different style of art. (Forbes)
Subaru Corp. to shut down plant over chip shortage. The Japanese auto maker said it plans to take its Yajima plant offline for at least two weeks, delaying the production of thousands of Legacy sedan and Forester SUV vehicles, to cope with a global dearth of semiconductors. (Reuters)
Robot artist’s work sells for $688,888. Sophia, an art-making robot developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, recently sold at auction the self-titled “Sophia Instantiation,” a collaborative piece that includes a physical painting and a 12-second video of the robot at work. (The Associated Press)
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The Supreme Court ruled for Alphabet Inc.’s Google in a multibillion-dollar battle with Oracle Corp. over elements of Google’s Android smartphone-operating system, a decision that could weaken software copyright protections but allow developers more room to build on each other’s products. (The Wall Street Journal)
Hitachi Ltd.’s $9.6 billion purchase of digital-engineering firm GlobalLogic Inc. amounts to a big bet that enterprise software will unleash the power of big data on heavy industry. (The Wall Street Journal)
SoftBank Group Corp. agreed to pay $2.8 billion for a 40% stake in Norwegian warehouse-automation company AutoStore, marking another big bet by the Japanese conglomerate on robot-enabled technology. (The Wall Street Journal)
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