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Google CEO Sundar Pichai says AI will advance humanity in 4 key ways
Big Tech companies like Google are betting that AI technology will help them earn billions of dollars in profits, and they’re funneling tons of resources toward the technology.
But this rush to cash in on AI raises questions about who will take the spoils: Are we moving toward a future where everyone thrives, or one where the rich get richer and the poor remain stagnant?
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, thinks we’re headed to a better, more equitable world.
At the Summit of the Future on Saturday, when world leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York to discuss AI and other topics, Pichai made a powerful case for AI’s benefits. He described four key areas where AI could further the UN’s sustainable-development goals, 17 goals that the UN says constitute a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.”
Accessing knowledge in a person’s native language
Pichai said that over the past year Google had added 110 languages to Google Translate and that it was working toward having 1,000 commonly spoken languages.
Accelerating scientific discovery
In May, Google announced AlphaFold 3, a model developed by Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs that it said could accurately predict the structure of proteins, DNA, RNA, and ligands and that it described as a breakthrough in drug discovery.
Since then, Google has made AlphaFold free to use. Pichai said it had been accessed by over 2 million researchers in over 190 countries, 30% of which are in the developing world. “Globally,” he said, “AlphaFold is being used in research that could help make crops more resistant to disease, discover new drugs in areas like malaria vaccines, and cancer treatments, and much more.”
Mitigating climate disaster
Pichai said Google’s Flood Hub system is designed to warn of climate disasters up to seven days in advance in 80 countries that together have more than 460 million people.
Google says 22 countries use its boundary-tracking systems for wildfires. And this month it announced FireSat, which it described as “a new global satellite constellation designed specifically to detect and track wildfires the size of a classroom within 20 minutes.”
Pichai said AI gave these technologies “a boost in accuracy, speed, and scale.”
Contributing to economic progress
Pichai described studies as suggesting that AI could boost global labor productivity by 1.4 percentage points and increase global GDP by 7 points within the next decade.
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