Using AI for Social Progress — What’s Holding Us Back?
As humanity makes strides in certain areas — such as battling infant mortality, others remain challenging. Malnutrition and preventable diseases are among such challenges. Climate change is also expected to affect us all — but it will affect the poorest the most.
The solutions that are available are insufficient. There aren’t enough doctors. Energy consumption is currently not an efficient system.
“This is why science and technology have been so critical in the history of civilisation,” writes Mustafa Suleyman, the founder of DeepMind, in his op-ed in the Economist. “Technological progress expands the possibilities of human achievement, increasing our collective capability to solve problems that were once considered unsolvable.”
Suleyman, whose company, DeepMind, was acquired by Google in 2014, thinks that we are about to witness of a technological boom, which we can in turn use for achieving social justice and reducing human suffering.
One technology that can help is artificial intelligence (AI). It is already making a tremendous impact — take the energy sector, for example. DeepMind developed a safe AI system to autonomously cool Google’s Big Data centres, resulting in 30% reduction in energy use. When a third of the world’s energy is consumed by industrial systems, the use of AI could create a global impact large enough to withstand the effects of climate change.
In the healthcare sector, Suleyman cites an example of the loss of eyesight — a preventable condition hampered by the lack of available doctors. DeepMind has created a technology that performs analysis of eye scans with a 94% accuracy rate — on par with medical professionals with decades of experience. While the technology is not yet on the market, it has the potential to revolutionise this field. Ideally, similar AI systems could save millions and let doctors focus on the care instead of the diagnostics.
Already, advances are happening in other areas of medicine. Deep-learning algorithms have outperformed humans in identifying malignant melanomas. Breast cancer machine-learning studies can reduce unnecessary surgeries by almost a third.
From medicine to energy, agriculture to housing, and infrastructure to scarce resource allocation, the potential of the use of AI is unlimited. Why aren’t we using it?
“First, not enough of our brightest minds are focused on solving the most serious problems facing humanity,” writes Suleyman. “We need new incentive structures that encourage technologists to take on society’s gravest challenges, and to do so with ethics at their heart.”
Second, he notes that societies need to be involved: govern the technologies and provide guidance so that they are used for the right purposes. Governments should focus on ethical outcomes.
When Eleanor Roosevelt presented the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 at the United Nations General Assembly, she said: “We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and the life of all mankind.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just as applicable today — but as technology seeps into every aspect of our lives, the time has come to include digital rights in the declaration.
Even with the right ideas, execution must follow. Change is needed. Take the simple fact that most health data globally is still kept on paper, rendering AI technology useless. For a new era, investing in digitisation is a must.
“What is at stake is something world-changing,” Suleyman concludes. “Together, we have the opportunity to put AI — the next phase of the technological revolution and one of the most important of all time — at the service of societal needs. If we can create the right structures, ethics and incentives, then the scientific and social progress could be truly incredible.”
Join us on Asgardia.Space
