Engineers at CTA.ai, an imaging-technology start-up in Poland, are trying to popularize a more comfortable alternative to the colonoscopy. To do so, they are using computer chips that are best known to video game fans. The chips are made by the Silicon Valley company Nvidia. Its technology can help sift speedily through images taken by pill-size sensors that patients swallow, allowing doctors to detect intestinal disorders 70 percent faster than if they pored over videos. As a result, procedures cost less and diagnoses are more accurate, said Mateusz Marmolowski, CTA’s chief executive. Health care applications like the one CTA is pioneering are among Nvidia’s many new targets. The company’s chips — known as graphics processing units, or GPUs — are finding homes in drones, robots, self-driving cars, servers, supercomputers and virtual-reality gear. A key reason for their spread is how rapidly the chips can handle complex artificial-intelligence tasks like image, facial and speech recognition. Excitement about A.I. applications has turned 24-year-old Nvidia into one of the technology sector’s hottest companies. Its stock-market value has swelled more than sevenfold in the past two years, topping $100 billion, and its revenue jumped 56 percent in the most recent quarter.

For drone users, Hurricane Harvey is likely to be the event that propelled unmanned aircraft to become integral parts of government and corporate disaster-recovery efforts. In the first six days after the storm hit, the Federal Aviation Administration issued more than 40 separate authorizations for emergency drone activities above flood-ravaged Houston and surrounding areas. They ranged from inspecting roadways to checking railroad tracks to assessing the condition of water plants, oil refineries and power lines. That total climbed above 70 last Friday and topped 100 by Sunday, including some flights prohibited under routine circumstances, according to people familiar with the details. Industry officials said all of the operations—except for a handful flown by media outlets—were conducted in conjunction with, or on behalf of, local, state or federal agencies. One person familiar with the details said certain applications were processed within hours, an unusually fast turnaround for federal safety regulators accustomed to days or weeks of analysis for such decisions. The scope and pace of approvals—advocated by drone proponents as essential tools to help search-and-recovery teams during natural emergencies—likely will boost momentum for longer-term industry and congressional drives to open up more airspace for broader commercial applications.