How best to use AI for human development

The excitement surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) today reflects not only how AI applications could transform businesses and economies, but also the hope that they can address challenges such as cancer and climate change. The idea that AI could revolutionize people's well-being is obviously appealing.

But just how realistic is it?

To answer that question, we (at McKinsey Global Institute) examined more than 150 scenarios in which AI is being applied or could be applied for social good. What we found is that AI could make a powerful contribution to resolving many types of societal challenges, but it is not a silver bullet. While AI's reach is broad, development bottlenecks and application risks must be overcome before the benefits can be realized on a global scale.