Rethink government with AI

Artificial intelligence could one day be used to tailor education to the needs of each individual child.Credit: Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe/Getty People produce more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. Businesses are harnessing these riches using artificial intelligence (AI) to add trillions of dollars in value to goods and services each year. Amazon dispatches items it anticipates customers will buy to regional hubs before they are purchased. Thanks to the vast extractive might of Google and Facebook, every bakery and bicycle shop is the beneficiary of personalized targeted advertising. But governments have been slow to apply AI to hone their policies and services.