Originally published at: https://mycroft.ai/blog/sharing-data-for-good-really-mycroft/
The data people are contributing at Mycroft have been invaluable to our efforts. People are contributing audio samples for Wake Word processing, and Utterances for STT. We are also getting transcriptions of subjective and unanswered queries that are being used to create customizable Mycroft Personas.
But what if we could do more with this data? What if we could do something awesome like help to end Alzheimer’s disease?
Test for Alzheimer's Using AI
That option is now on the table and it is exactly what we plan to do. In partnership with our friends at Really (https://really.ai/) our Community is going to help to better understand how language can be used to detect Alzheimer’s 20 years earlier than current diagnostic methods.Really has experts and expert systems that are being trained to detect Alzheimer’s based on how an individual’s use of language changes over time. To realize their dream – a world without Alzheimer’s – Really needs large data sets and access to broad populations. That is where Mycroft comes in. A Data Collective of people who choose to share their language with Really can be aggregated, processed, and used to build models that help detect Alzheimer’s before neurodegeneration takes hold.
Really is the first of what we hope will be thousands of companies that can use the data people are generating through Mycroft while generously contributing to our group effort. Of course every person using Mycroft will maintain control of their data; the choice of whether to participate with any given effort will remain with the person using the technology. People who use Mycroft own their data and can use it any way they see fit … or not use it at all. The choice is theirs, not ours. And, we’ll work with groups that treat their customers’ privacy and data with the same respect we do.
So how do we track which people have Opted-In? Right now we are evaluating several solutions, but blockchain looks to be an excellent candidate. Initially there will be an additional Opt-In choice at home.mycroft.ai to become part of this new Data Collective. We’ll keep you posted on the progress and, with luck, we’ll all be able to say that we were part of the effort that helped make Alzheimer’s a disease of the past.
About Really
Really detects, monitors, and assesses the daily function of individuals – non-invasively and continuously over time – to earlier detect and objectively measure preclinical symptoms of neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological disorders, from their everyday use of language and other digital data sources.Really integrates machine learning and computational neuroscience, to analyze longitudinal medical, behavioural, and contextual data derived from language, to provide a highly-scalable, low-friction, and cost-effective monitoring and assessment measure for brain health.