More Than Techies: AI's Benefits for Real People
Following up on my recent op-ed in the WSJ...
Us #AI practitioners need to get out of our bubble. We’re energized by the day-to-day challenges of making AI work better and excited by AI’s immense potential, but most people are far more skeptical. According to the Pew Research Center, 37% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI, 45% are equally concerned and excited, and just 18% are more excited than concerned. Given that the headlines on AI are all about job losses, hallucinations, cheating college students, and the prospect of AI getting us into a war before we’ve noticed what’s happening, can you really blame people?
I wrote this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal as a corrective. I want people to understand that AI will have a tangible, beneficial impact on their lives. This op-ed spoke to how AI will lower food prices, where Americans are feeling the effects of inflation most acutely. But AI will benefit real people in countless ways, including:
Transportation: Nothing aggravates people as much as sitting in traffic, and that traffic has enormous economic consequences, too. What if AI determines our traffic patterns, instead, shaving countless cumulative hours off of people’s commutes every year? And let’s not forget the enormous potential for self-driving cars, which are only possible because of AI, to save lives by limiting traffic accidents.
Healthcare: Diagnosing patients can be extremely difficult, particularly if they have symptoms that could point to any number of underlying causes. But AI can detect patterns a doctor would never think to look for to identify the cause of someone’s medical issue. We are not far from AI detecting cancer or heart disease in patients long before it shows up on any tests, and, consequently, saving their lives.
Climate: The climate crisis is here, and it is real. The only way we can reverse this worrying trend is to cut carbon emissions immediately and substantially. AI can help companies, governments, and even private households identify quick, relatively easy ways they may not have considered to lower their emissions footprint.
Financial Services: Racial discrimination, both subconscious and very overt, has plagued the financial services industry for as long as there have been financial services. In recent decades, this has been most acute in lending and credit decisions. AI can identify where people have been refused credit for good reasons, and when discrimination is the only feasible answer. Once we know when and where discrimination is happening, we can far more effectively root it out.
Education: As any parent who has ever worked with a school district to get their child an individualized education plan (IEP) can attest, getting educational plans tailored for a student can be painful. And that’s with school districts only on the hook for IEPs for students with special needs. With AI, though, every student in America could get an individualized education plan, tailored to their strengths and areas for improvement, and even, thanks to burgeoning technologies like those found in ChatGPT, get the materials that will help them follow through on their IEPs.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much else AI could do for people in ways they can see and feel. It’s up to us to make sure they know.