Do I sound sick to you? Researchers are building AI that would diagnose COVID-19 by listening to people talk.; Business Insider, April 30, 2020

Aaron Holmes, Business Insider; Do I sound sick to you? Researchers are building AI that would diagnose COVID-19 by listening to people talk.

"Analyzing people's speech, coughing, and breathing patterns as a diagnostic tool isn't new — tussiphonography, or the study of cough sounds, has been around for decades. Now, AI researchers are emboldened by early reports from doctors that COVID-19 appears to have unique effects on patients' coughing and speech...

To give people an incentive to donate voice audio, Singh's lab initially published a rough AI tool online that would predict whether people have a higher chance of being COVID-19 positive using voice samples, along with a disclaimer that the tool wasn't giving real medical advice. But within 48 hours, Carnegie Mellon forced the lab to take down the online test, which could have run afoul of FDA guidelines and be misinterpreted by people regardless of the disclaimer.

"It's a perfectly valid concern, and my whole team had not thought of that ethical side of things," Singh said. "The other side is that hopefully the COVID pandemic will pass, and once it passes, hopefully it will never come back. So if we don't get the data now, we're never going to have data for research.""