From tracking poachers to boosting donations, AI works for social good

January 31, 2019Disaster relief, remote-healthcare diagnostics, tracking rhino poachers, upping student achievement--each of these disparate activities could get a big boost from artificial intelligence (AI). A recent discussion paper from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), "Notes from the AI frontier: Applying AI for social good," lays out just how AI can help tackle some of the world's most challenging social problems, analyzing 160 use cases. The good news: about one-third are already being used today. Still, there's much more that can be done, both to implement these solutions and to fully understand the breadth of what they can do for social-good organizations. We gathered questions about this topic from our social-media audience around the globe for Michael Chui, an MGI partner based in McKinsey's San Francisco office and one of the report's authors.