Can AI Make The World Happier and More Peaceful
thank you thank you
you may have heard of a story wherein
artificial intelligence is trying to
defeat
the human race and take over the world
or maybe seen a movie where a man
falls in love with an ai girlfriend
because his real girlfriend left him
i found it interesting that we so often
hear
about artificial intelligence in a
fearful or
funny context we don’t even realize it
but from medical devices to smartphones
air is already a part of our lives
at its core ai is a fundamental tool
that can help solve our most pressing
problems
in fact all the unjustified fear around
ai
is preventing us from properly using ai
to make our world a better place
it is unfortunate that despite
tremendous advances in technology
we still see millions of people going to
bed hungry
natural calamities like earthquakes and
floods
shatter millions of lives every year
can artificial intelligence help solve
these serious problems that we as humans
are facing every day
the answer is yes in this
talk i want to tell you how ai will make
the world
happier and peaceful hello everyone
i am pranav an engineering lead at
google research
i work on building artificial
intelligence to provide magical product
experiences for our users
recently i’ve been using ai to help
solve difficult humanitarian problems
that our global society has been facing
since a very long time
we all have probably heard the term ai
at some point or the other nevertheless
it would help to introduce it quickly
before we dive deeper well
artificial intelligence is the science
where machines can
self-learn from the data to make
themselves smarter
so instead of us giving it instructions
ai machine can go through patterns of
data
and learn to do tasks on their own
this is very similar to how we as
children learn to talk
walk or do things isn’t that fascinating
one important ai technology is neural
networks
neural networks are inspired by the
human brain
and work like the human brain just like
how our brain is organized as
nerve as layers of nerve cells called
neurons
neural networks are also structured in
the same manner
a small child observes their
surroundings
and learns things by observing patterns
around them
similarly neural networks learn by
observing many
examples and learning the connections
between the neurons based on those
examples
let us use a simple example to
understand this
we have an image at hand and the task
for our neural network
is to identify whether that image is
that of a cat or a dock
the way we solve it is by taking the
pixels of this image
and feeding it to the lowest layer also
called as the input layer
this layer processes this information
and then passes it on to the next higher
layer
this information flow is repeated
through multiple layers
until it reaches the top layer which has
two neurons
one corresponding to a dog and the other
corresponding to a cat
the neuron that gets more activated at
the top level
is essentially what gets predicted as
the final answer by this neural network
so this is how we use this neural
network to get
answers now one might wonder
how do we teach or train this neural
network
to teach it we feed in a bunch of
known examples examples where we already
know the answer
through this neural network when the
network gives
a wrong answer we use that opportunity
to back propagate the information
through the network
backpropagating is essentially a
feedback mechanism
using which we correct the edge weights
between the layers
such that the next time it is more
likely to give us a correct answer
this is just like learning from your
mistakes
on the other hand when the neural
network gives a correct answer
we reward it and we reinforce its ways
through the same process
very similar to how we reward a child
when they do the right thing
technique of back propagation learning
from your own mistakes
is what makes neural networks so
powerful enough to learn
almost anything
so now that we have an idea about the
basic concept
of ai and neural networks let us talk
about how it will help our society be
happier
air is already used in applications all
around us
ai is helping make our roads safer
through self-driving cars and smart
traffic signals
when you watch a video online ai often
helps you decide which video to watch
based upon your preferences
when you send a text message ai can even
help you draft that text message
through these applications ei is making
us more productive
by automating the mundane tasks and
happier by
freeing up our time to do things that we
love the most
[Music]
but some of the most challenging
problems that we continue to face
in the 21st century are problems like
hunger climate change or even illiteracy
given that we have ai in our quiver
we should expect and even rightfully
demand that it helps us solve these
difficult problems
let’s first talk about hunger about 690
million people
still go to bed on an empty stomach each
night
we are in the 21st century we claim
ourselves to be a modern civilization
so it’s simply not acceptable that so
many people suffer from lack of food
a major cause of hunger tends to be
calamities
not only natural calamities like floods
and earthquakes but also calamities
inflicted by humans like war
when a calamity strikes large
populations are cut off from basic
necessities like food and shelter
the global humanitarian community is
usually overwhelmed in the aftermath of
such a disaster
distribution of relief often tends to be
an even bigger problem than the
availability of relief material
so in partnership with the united
nations
we developed ai technology that can help
deploy aid
to disaster struck regions by analyzing
their aerial imagery
we analyzed that aerial imagery to
pinpoint the locations
that are most affected by damage and
thus
in critical need of aid
we solve this problem by using deep
learning
to compare before and after disaster
images of a region
when we compare the two images we were
able to determine where the most damage
had occurred as a result of the disaster
we do this using a two-step process the
first step
is to detect all of the buildings in a
given region
once we determine the buildings the
second step
is to determine which of these buildings
are damaged by the disaster
here’s an example from the haiti
earthquake
on the left side we can see buildings
identified as damaged
and on the right side we can see
buildings identified as not damaged
we can see that this technology is able
to make predictions that are at power or
even better than those made by humans
such information when aggregated
together
highlights regions that are hurt by the
disaster
this data this technology is hugely
useful to deploy
aid to people who are in critical need
of this aid
like food and medicine
this was an example of how ai is helping
solve
hunger but the potential of ai
extends far beyond to areas like health
care
and education in healthcare
i strongly believe that ai can make high
quality diagnosis accessible to the
entire planet
diagnosis that was previously accessible
only to the elite few
will become accessible to every single
person
we are already seeing this happen in the
field of diabetic retinopathy
which unfortunately has been a leading
cause of blindness
it’s truly saddening that most of these
patients did not have access to proper
diagnosis
as a result they didn’t receive adequate
treatment
and their health declined
using ai we now have diagnosis
technology
that performs at least as well as
doctors do
this is making diagnosis a lot more
scalable and accessible
this application is a perfect example of
human ai partnership
where an ai does the heavy lifting and
frees up our doctors to
spend more time interacting with and
helping their patients
i envision ai to work along similar
lines of human ai partnership
where both humans and ai work together
education education is the bedrock of
every society
after all that is what helps grow our
children to become capable citizens
unfortunately there are millions of
children out there
still without access to formal education
what if ei could make education more
accessible by providing a personalized
learning experience
to every child based on their strengths
and needs
every child is unique and deserves
access to high quality education that is
tailored
for them every field that we look
at be it agriculture or education or
healthcare can deeply benefit from ai
imagine a smartphone helping a farmer
to plan and plant crops get harvest
information
forecast weather forecast rainfall and
even get access to agricultural supplies
what is the use of technology if it
cannot truly uplift the repressed and
enrich their lives
friends ai is not science fiction
it’s a powerful tool that’s already here
to make our lives easier and happier
before closing i’ll say this
we cannot let irrational fear inhibit us
from using ai for human good
just like the steam engine invented in
the 18th century
or the telephone inventor in the 19th
century
ai has the potential to significantly
improve our lives
ei will help uplift millions of people
out of poverty
but just like the steam engine and like
the telephone
it will only be as useful as we make it
to be
so it is up to each of us to identify
such productive opportunities
and utilize ai to help heal the world
let us work together to use ai to make
our world
happier and more peaceful thank you very
[Applause]
much
you