Search engine giant Google has a sister company called Verily, a life sciences and healthcare firm that recently teamed up with the National Environment Agency (NEA) to help combat the spread of mosquito-borne diseases in Singapore.
And how are they doing so? Enter Project Wolbachia, the Artificial Intelligence-driven undertaking to release sterile male mosquitoes into the wild to prevent breeding. A literal debugging, really.
Male mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria are sterile and do not bite or spread diseases. When they mate with female mosquitoes, the eggs fail to hatch, hence reducing the population of the bugs and also the possibility of spreading diseases such as dengue, Zika, and yellow fever. According to a Debug Project blog post by Verily, the AI and computer vision algorithms come into play when sorting the male from female mosquitoes that have been bred — only the males will be released into the wild through an automated release system.
The method has been proven a success too. Earlier this year, Verily assisted the Australian government with a similar project trialed in Queensland. The programme managed to help stop the spread of dengue fever in the region.
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