A volunteer effort by Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers has shown it can deliver significant research outcomes rapidly to help tackle COVID-19. Within two months, CLAIRE’s self-organising volunteers delivered the World’s first comprehensive curated repository of COVID-19-related datasets useful for drug-repurposing, drafted review papers on the role CT/X-ray scan analysis and robotics could play, and progressed research in other areas. Given the pace required and nature of voluntary efforts, the teams faced a number of challenges. These offer insights in how better to prepare for future volunteer scientific efforts and large scale, data-dependent AI collaborations in general. We offer seven recommendations on how to best leverage such efforts and collaborations in the context of managing future crises.

人工智能 (AI) 研究人员的志愿者努力表明，它可以快速提供重要的研究成果，以帮助应对 COVID-19。在两个月内，CLAIRE 的自组织志愿者提供了世界上第一个综合整理的 COVID-19 相关数据集存储库，可用于药物再利用，起草了有关 CT/X 射线扫描分析和机器人技术可以发挥的作用的评论论文，并取得了进展在其他领域。鉴于所需的速度和志愿工作的性质，团队面临着许多挑战。这些为如何更好地为未来的志愿者科学工作和大规模、依赖数据的人工智能合作提供了见解。我们就如何在管理未来危机的背景下最好地利用这些努力和合作提出七项建议。