While discussions about AI often center around the technology's commercial potential, increasingly, researchers are investigating ways that AI can be harnessed to drive societal change. Among others, Facebook chief AI scientist Yann LeCun and Google Brain cofounder Andrew Ng have argued that mitigating climate change and promoting energy efficiency are preeminent challenges for AI researchers. Along this vein, researchers at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute have proposed a framework designed to quantify the social impact of AI through techniques like compute-efficient machine learning. An IBM project delivers farm cultivation recommendations from digital farm "twins" that simulate the future soil conditions of real-world crops. Other researchers are using AI-generated images to help visualize climate change, and nonprofits like WattTime are working to reduce households' carbon footprint by automating when electric vehicles, thermostats, and appliances are active based on where renewable energy is available.

… to work together in identifying artificial intelligence (AI) applications that accelerate reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Go to any healthcare conference and a speaker is bound to mention a new use of artificial intelligence. Now, as the technology becomes more and more mainstream, a pair of industry experts are creating a new organization that seeks to legitimize and promote AI and other cutting edge technologies in healthcare. Founder and former CEO of the American Telemedicine Association Jonathan Linkous and Mary Ann Liebert, CEO of Mary Ann Liebert Inc., have launched a new organization called PATH (Partnership for Automation and Innovation in Healthcare) that will work as an advocacy alliance to promote AI, robotics, and automation in healthcare. "AI and related innovations have already enabled industries such as banking, aviation, and entertainment to grow, provide higher- quality products, and allow consumers greater choice," Linkous, who will serve as CEO of the new organization, said in a statement. "With spiraling costs, increasing need, decreasing resources, and rapidly advancing technologies, healthcare desperately needs to catch up."