An Enlightened Future with Artificial Intelligence

The decisions that we make now and in the near future will set the tone for the rest of the decade including how artificial intelligence (AI) may develop and how we will use it. It will require enlightened leadership to maximise the benefit for human society. This article is focused on providing a moment of reflection in terms of where we are and where we are going from a policy and philosophical perspective and to serve as a prelude to a more technical article on the next generation of AI that will follow. Positive use case potential for AI includes the fight against Covid -19. For example The Lancet published an article authored by Zhou et al. entitled "Artificial Intelligence in COVID-19 drug repurposing" and state that " In this Review, we introduce guidelines on how to use AI for accelerating drug repurposing or repositioning, for which AI approaches are not just formidable but are also necessary. We discuss how to use AI models in precision medicine, and as an example, how AI models can accelerate COVID-19 drug repurposing."