Artificial Intelligence (AI) Transforming Our Health, Wellbeing, Environment and Our Economy: Healing with AI

The estimates for the economic costs of inventory mismanagement in the non-grocery retail sector in the US in 2018 amounted to USD 300Bn and the retail fashion sector have been destroying surplus inventory! This is both a financial and environmental wastage that application of Machine Learning for better forecasting product demand, recommendation algorithms to better target and match supply with demand and supply chain optimisation may assist with. A report undertaken by PWC and commissioned by Microsoft set out that applying AI to four key sectors of the economy (Energy, Transportation, Agriculture and Water) alone would result in material reductions of Green House Gas Emissions, whilst also driving economic growth and substantial increase in jobs. More specifically, the report set out that by 2030 AI applied to the four sectors could enable the creation of 38 million jobs, $5.2 Trillion of GDP growth and 2.4 Gigatons of Carbon Dioxide emissions (or a 4% reduction). These are vast numbers and align the benefits of economic growth with climate goals. Accenture Strategy forecast that standalone 5G network technology may create 3 million jobs across the US and $500Bn of GDP growth. More recently a BCG Study forecast that 5G may drive the addition of approximately 4.5 Million Jobs and an increase of About $1.5 Trillion in US GDP Over this decade in the US alone! Standalone 5G networks alongside AI will enable the AIoT across the Edge of the network and a whole new era of innovation ranging from 5G enabled smart glasses for the Metaverse to other next generation wearables and dynamically responsive intelligent agents across our homes and workplaces. Intelligence here is not defined as AGI at the level of the human brain and rather ranging from Narrow AI (ANI) and increasingly Broad AI (Artificial Broad Intelligence, ABI) that may multitask but not quite match the capabilities of the human brain.