This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
Big tech companies like Google are convinced that AI technology can help them generate billions of dollars in profits, and they are pouring a lot of resources into the technology.
But this rush to profit from AI raises the question of who will benefit: Are we heading for a future where everyone prospers, or one where the rich get richer and the poor remain stagnant?
Google CEO Sundar Pichai believes we are moving towards a better, more equitable world.
Pichai made a powerful case for the benefits of AI at the Future Summit on Saturday, where world leaders gathered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to discuss AI and other topics. He outlined four key areas where AI can advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 goals that the UN describes as “a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for humanity and the planet.”
Access knowledge in your own language
Pichai said Google has added 110 new languages to Translate over the past year and is working towards covering 1,000 of the world’s most spoken languages.
Accelerating Scientific Discovery
In May, Google announced Alphafold 3, a model developed by Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs that can accurately predict the structures of proteins, DNA, RNA, and ligands, marking a new breakthrough in drug discovery.
Since then, Google has made Alphafold available for free, and it is now used by more than 2 million researchers in over 190 countries, 30 percent of whom are in developing countries, Pichai said. “All over the world, Alphafold is being used to help improve crop disease resistance and discover new medicines in areas like malaria vaccines and cancer treatments.”
Climate disaster mitigation
Pichai said Google’s Flood Hub system provides early warning of weather disasters up to seven days in advance, protecting more than 460 million people in 80 countries. Google’s wildfire perimeter tracking system has also been deployed in 22 countries. Earlier this month, Google also unveiled FireSat, “a new global constellation of satellites specifically designed to detect and track classroom-sized wildfires within 20 minutes.”
AI will bring “improved precision, speed and scale” to these technologies, he said.
Contribution to economic development
Pichai said research shows that AI could boost global labor productivity by 1.4 percentage points and increase global GDP by seven percentage points within the next decade.
