Google CEO Sundar Pichai: AI will advance humanity in these 4 ways

Google CEO Sundar Pichai believes we are moving towards a better, fairer world.

At the Future Summit on Saturday, where world leaders gathered at the UN headquarters in New York to discuss artificial intelligence and other topics, Pichai made a strong case for the benefits of artificial intelligence. He articulated four key areas where AI could advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, 17 goals that comprise a “shared plan for peace and prosperity for people and planet,” according to the UN.

Accessing knowledge in their mother tongue

Pichai said that in the past year, Google has added 110 new languages ​​to Google Translate and is working on 1,000 of the world’s most spoken languages.

Accelerating scientific discoveries

In May, Google announced Alphafold 3, a model developed by Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs that could accurately predict the structure of proteins, DNA, RNA and ligands and presented a breakthrough in drug discovery.

Since then, Google has made Alphafold free to use, and it has been accessed by more than 2 million researchers in more than 190 countries, 30 percent of whom are in the developing world, Pichai said. “Globaly Alphafold is used in research that could help increase crop resistance to disease, discover new drugs in areas such as malaria vaccines and cancer treatments, and more.”

Mitigation of climate disasters

Pichai said Google’s Flood Hub system provides early warnings of climate disasters up to seven days in advance and protects more than 460 million people in 80 countries. Google’s wildfire boundary tracking systems are already in 22 countries. Earlier this month, Google also announced FireSat, “a new global satellite constellation designed specifically to detect and track classroom-sized fires within 20 minutes.”

AI gives these technologies “a boost in precision, speed and scale,” he said.

Contribution to economic progress

Pichai said studies show AI could increase global labor productivity by 1.4 percentage points and increase global GDP by 7 points over the next decade.