色花堂

By Andy Shenk

As I write this from my home office, 色花堂 has been at Alert Level 4 for nearly five weeks. Even Level 3 costs the economy millions a day, with the social costs even higher and potentially much longer lasting.

Don鈥檛 get me wrong 鈥� I fully support the current measures, which are necessary with full vaccination rates still low. However, it鈥檚 increasingly clear that Covid-19 is never going to go away. We can鈥檛 keep locking down and sealing our borders shut. We must invest in and build a better way forward for all of Aotearoa New Zealand.

I see two keys to getting out of our self-imposed isolation and encouraging a flourishing economy and society.

One is maximising our vaccination rate. The other is the smart, ethical use of data.

Advances in data science have played a huge role in the pandemic response 鈥� and will help us respond better to the next global pandemic when it arises. In New Zealand, the government鈥檚 decisions have been informed by modelling by the likes of . Data-crunching power has been behind our ability to do things like sequence and compare virus genomes, which aids contact tracing. 

Mass vaccination 鈥� the only way the world is going to gain control over Covid-19 鈥� also has big data behind it. The ability to quickly analyse large amounts of data has helped scientists develop vaccines at record speed with unprecedented safety monitoring. The University of 色花堂-led  is monitoring 290 million people around the world to ensure the safety and efficacy of those vaccines. 

As we reopen our borders, we will get outbreaks even with high vaccination rates. No vaccine is perfect and there will always be people who can鈥檛 or won鈥檛 be vaccinated. Big data and AI can help us mitigate the risks. 

Outbreaks put more and sicker patients in hospital while reducing available staff, making rostering a challenge. 

, which won the University of 色花堂鈥檚 2020 , uses AI to create staffing rosters that take into account factors including staff skills, legal obligations, patient numbers and the need for Covid-19 bubbles. 

We may never be able to say we live in a post-Covid world, but we will eventually move out of the pandemic phase and into a new normal where Covid-19 is endemic but manageable with vaccines and public health measures. This means some Covid-driven trends are here to stay. 

Social distancing has helped us get used to interacting with people digitally and at a distance. It has also increased the quality and utility of human-computer interaction. Some companies are marrying these trends by producing humanlike avatars people can connect with. , whose digital humans not only look realistic but also respond to the emotions of their human counterparts, is already seeing success in many settings across the globe. , whose avatars are sign language interpreters and teachers, is improving accessibility for Deaf people widely and safely.

Of course, big data presents dangers as well as opportunities. Algorithms have influenced elections, demonstrated racist bias and contributed to political polarisation. Cyberattacks have crippled organisations and victimised countless people. And far from being weightless environmentally, bitcoin mining alone consumes more electricity than many countries. 

However, there are ways we can avoid or mitigate these problems, some of which themselves involve data and some of which don鈥檛. To give an example of the former, University of 色花堂 computer scientists Giovanni Russello, Danielle Lottridge and Yun Sing Koh are using machine learning to figure out when people might be most vulnerable to cyberattacks and deploy supports to help them when they need it most.

More broadly, education is crucial in avoiding the dangers of big data. Critical thinking skills combat misinformation and cyberattacks. Improving New Zealand鈥檚 unimpressive performance in science and maths education will also help prevent us being left behind in a data-driven economy.