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We live in an information age where technology is constantly and rapidly progressing with every single day. Furthermore, emerging technologies are driving the rapid rate of innovation and having a transformational impact on the IT industry and further afield. As Bill Gates once said, “Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.”

Over the past years, digitalization has been a buzzword for many companies, as they try to take advantage of new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud environments, to improve operations, centralize data, and enhance customer engagement.

When Slovenia appears in international media, it is often for being rediscovered as a beautiful tourist destination offering a great diversity of scenic natural sights and authentic experiences.

But recently, Slovenia has also captured some of the world’s attention by establishing the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), a first-of-its-kind global AI center backed by UNESCO [1]. This was widely regarded as a major achievement of the Slovenian AI research community and was even covered by Mark Minevich [2] and Rebecca Banovic [3] in Forbes magazine.

In every pandemic crisis throughout the history, analyzing data and numbers mattered. And the history isn’t short. In modern days, collected information material on crisis was analyzed upon the end of each pandemic, resulting in statistic reports, based on which key takeaways were drawn out. This knowledge accumulation is invaluable, and represents the foundation of modern epidemiology, setting up the rules and guidelines for handling pandemic crisis situations. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that AI provides an abundant arsenal of tools used to fight pandemic. 

When you read about Machine Learning (ML), and what this concept represents, everything may seem idyllic and simple - you have some data, you pass it on to an ML algorithm, and voila, magic happens. You get a model that can predict the future. Not long ago, I would’ve said: "Not so fast, there is a LOT of manual work behind this story, and you can't simplify ML just like that." However, today, when Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) is a reality, I would’ve to think twice before saying this, and maybe even believe that magic does exist.