Seven years have passed since world leaders met in New York and agreed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to resolve major challenges including poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change and health.
The pandemic undoubtedly diverted attention from some of these issues in the past couple of years. But even before COVID-19, the UN was warning that progress to meet the SDGs was not advancing at the speed or on the scale needed. Meeting them by 2030 will be tough.
Yet I remain optimistic. The pandemic demonstrated like nothing else the power of working collaboratively, across borders, for the benefit of society. It concentrated minds, funding and policy to accelerate research into virus detection, disease treatments, vaccines and manufacturing platforms.
It was a truly remarkable effort from the global community to develop effective vaccines within a year of the virus first being detected, and these and other treatments have dramatically reduced the viruss fatality rate. This can be attributed to the brilliance, perseverance and creativity of scientists across the world. But they were not working alone: Artificial intelligence (AI) also played a key part.
The US company Moderna was among the first to release an effective COVID-19 vaccine. One reason it was able to make this breakthrough so quickly was the use of AI to speed up development. Modernas Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer Dave Johnson explains that AI algorithms and robotic automation helped them move from manually producing around 30 mRNAs (a molecule fundamental to the vaccine) each month, to being able to produce around 1,000 a month.
Moderna is also using AI to help their mRNA sequence design. Its co-founder Noubar Afeyan recently predicted during a visit to Imperial College London that immune medicine will see large advances in the coming years, and we can look forward to a future where medicine is more pre-emptive than reactionary.
If we can catch disease early and delay it, at a minimum, we could have a lot more impact at a lot less cost, he said. This is a great example of how AI can free up time for scientists to accelerate discovery and dedicate efforts to solving big challenges.
We are also seeing examples of AI technology driving improvements in other areas of healthcare, such as disease screening for cancer and malaria. Researchers from Google Health, DeepMind, the NHS, Northwestern University and colleagues at Imperial have designed and trained an AI model to spot breast cancer from X-ray images.
The computer algorithm, which was trained using mammography images from almost 29,000 women, was shown to be as effective as human radiologists in spotting cancer. At a time when health services around the world are stretched as they deal with long backlogs of patients following the pandemic, this sort of technology can help ease bottlenecks and improve treatment.
For malaria, a handheld lab-on-a-chip molecular diagnostics systems developed with AI could revolutionize how the disease is detected in remote parts of Africa. The project, which is led by the Digital Diagnostics for Africa Network, brings together collaborators such as MinoHealth AI Labs in Ghana and Imperial College Londons Global Development Hub. This technology could help pave the way for universal health coverage and push us towards achieving SDG3.
There are numerous other examples of how advances in AI could support our understanding of climate change (SDG13), enable our transition to sustainable transport systems (SDG11), and accelerate agri-tech to help farmers end food poverty and malnutrition (SDG2) among many benefits to the other SDGs too.
For example, the Alan Turing Institute, the UKs national centre for data science and artificial intelligence, are using machine learning to better understand the complex interactions between climate and Arctic sea ice.
With an expanding global population, we face challenges around food demand and production not only how to reduce malnourishment but the impact on the planet too, such as deforestation, emissions and biodiversity loss. To meet these needs, the use of AI in agriculture is growing rapidly and is enabling farmers to enhance crop production, direct machinery to carry out tasks autonomously, and identify pest infestations before they occur.
Smart sensing technology is also helping farmers use fertilizer more effectively and reduce environmental damage. An exciting research project, funded by the EPSRC, Innovate UK and Cytiva, will help growers optimize timing and amount of fertilizer to use on their crops, taking into account factors like the weather and soil condition. This will reduce the expense and damaging effects of over-fertilizing soil.
Developing sustainable and smart transport systems will also be vital as cities and countries look to reduce the impact of air pollution and improve infrastructure. In the last decade, AI has powered a revolution in transport and mobility, from autonomous vehicles to ride-sharing apps and route-planners. AI is also being used to make public transport systems more efficient, reduce traffic congestion and pollution, and improve safety.
Despite its benefits to research and medicine, integrating AI into society and innovation is not always smooth sailing. Recent controversies on facial recognition, automated decision-making and COVID-related tracking, have led to some caution and suspicion. We need to ensure that AI is employed in ways that are trusted, transparent and inclusive. We need to make sure that there is an internationally coordinated, collaborative approach, just as there was in the pandemic.
The World Economic Forums Global AI Action Alliance brings together more than 100 leading companies, governments, international organizations, non-profits and academics united in a commitment to maximize AI's societal benefits while minimizing its risks.
The World Economic Forums Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in partnership with the UK government, has developed guidelines for more ethical and efficient government procurement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Governments across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East are piloting these guidelines to improve their AI procurement processes.
Our guidelines not only serve as a handy reference tool for governments looking to adopt AI technology, but also set baseline standards for effective, responsible public procurement and deployment of AI standards that can be eventually adopted by industries.
We invite organizations that are interested in the future of AI and machine learning to get involved in this initiative. Read more about our impact.
It is imperative that we put good processes and practices in place to ensure AI is developed in a positive and ethical way to see it adopted and used to its fullest by citizens and governments.
We must now work together to ensure that artificial intelligence can accelerate progress of the Sustainable Development Goals and help us get back on track to reaching them by 2030.
Written by
Alice Gast, President, Imperial College London
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
More here:
Why artificial intelligence is vital in the race to meet the SDGs - World Economic Forum
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? - April 25th, 2012 [April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course - May 7th, 2012 [May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award - May 13th, 2012 [May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants - May 27th, 2012 [May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? - May 28th, 2012 [May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty - May 30th, 2012 [May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App - May 31st, 2012 [May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google - June 5th, 2012 [June 5th, 2012]