AI’s Top-Secret Mission: Solving Humanity’s Biggest Problems While We Argue About Apocalypse

Beyond doomsday fantasies, Satyen K. Bordoloi finds that the jaw-dropping truth about AI is stranger—and more hopeful—than anyone dared imagine.

London, February 2025. The lab at the Imperial College hummed with the faint buzz of dormant machines. Professor José R. Penadés slumped over his desk, surrounded by stacks of paper and half-empty coffee cups. For a decade, his team had chased a ghost: How do superbugs spread antibiotic resistance like wildfire? They finally had the answer. So, they decided to give Co-Scientist, Google’s new AI tool they had been testing, a try. They fed the system the data.

Forty-eight hours later, the AI didn’t just confirm their hypotheses—it exploded them. In addition to the one already found, four new hypotheses flashed onto the screen. The AI cracked the mystery that had haunted science for decades, which the professor and his team had spent a decade studying in two days.

This wasn’t magic. It was machine learning, trained on terabytes of genetic data, connecting dots humans couldn’t see.

Why AI Gets a Bad Rap: This isn’t the first time AI has solved something time-consuming in quick order. Last year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry was won by scientists who used AI to predict folding for almost every known protein. They did in two years with AI—which could have taken centuries the traditional way.

Yet, for every headline cheering AI’s triumphs, ten claim AI will cause doomsday, screaming: “What if it goes rogue?” Movies paint fantastical scenarios of Skynet and robot overlords. Elon Musk called AI “summoning the demon” while getting busy building his own. Even the late Stephen Hawking cautioned that AI could “spell the end of the human race.”

Not all of the anxieties are baseless. Algorithms have perpetuated bias in hiring. Deepfakes do threaten democracy. And automation does disrupt industries, leading to mass layoffs. But here’s the twist: AI amplifies our flaws as much as it can accentuate our virtues. For every risk blown out of proportion, thousands of unsung stories of AI saving lives, inventing new materials, healing ecosystems, and bridging divides, exist. Here are just a few examples from 10 fields.

1. In Disaster Management—the Ultimate Lifesaver: When Cyclone Fengal barrelled toward India’s southern states last October, traditional models gave 48-hour warning. Today, DeepMind’s flood-forecasting AI predicts riverine floods five days in advance with 90% accuracy. In Mozambique, where floods displace thousands yearly, this tech has slashed evacuation times by 70%. Meanwhile, One Concern’s AI can map wildfire risks in cities down to individual buildings, giving firefighters one hell of a tactical edge.
2. In Energy—Creating a Sustainable Future: In Spain, AutoGrid’s AI manages a solar-powered microgrid, balancing supply and demand so seamlessly that fossil fuel use has dropped by about 40% annually. Meanwhile, in Norway, AI-designed solid-state batteries created by startups like QuantumScape push electric cars to 800-mile ranges.
3. In The Farm—Green Thumb: In Iowa, USA, Blue River Technology’s “See & Spray” robots now tend 20% of cotton fields, cutting herbicide use by 80%. Meanwhile, CropX’s soil sensors boost water efficiency on Kenyan farms by 30% while turning arid plots into arable lands.
4. As Cyber Sentinel—the Digital Immune System: When a ransomware attack happened on a Texas hospital in 2023, Darktrace’s AI quarantined the threat in 12 seconds, saving patient data and potentially lives. Exactly the opposite happened when a similar attack crippled AIIMS beginning in November 2022. AI cybersecurity tools are estimated to block over 4 million threats daily.
5. In Education—Adaptable Classroom Teacher: No kid likes to study maths. But what if it could be made exciting and tailored to each child’s unique learning capability? That is what DreamBox Learning’s AI tutor does. The AI adapts to each student’s pace, turning math phobia into mastery. Thanks to AI, the days of one-size-fits-all education in obese classrooms are being replaced by personalized learning.
6. In Manufacturing—Factories That Fix Themselves: Siemens has an AI tool that predicts equipment failures before they happen, thus optimising maintenance schedules and saving companies millions in downtime, thus boosting productivity. Meanwhile, General Electric’s Predix AI platform “helps industrial businesses optimise their operations and assets” by connecting machines, data, people, and other assets.
7. In Mental Health—Rise of Digital Therapists: In schools across the U.S., AI-powered chatbots like Woebot and Wysa are stepping into the role of digital counsellors, offering teens a safe, judgment-free space to express what they feel and providing coping strategies for anxiety, stress, and depression.

Sonar Mental Health has developed an AI-powered “wellbeing companion” named Sonny to support students’ mental health. Sonny combines empathetic AI-driven conversations with actionable insights that are useful for students and school staff. What sets it apart is its hybrid model, which blends AI support with human oversight. It is now being rolled out to school districts struggling to meet the soaring demand for mental health services.

8. In Healthcare—From Superbugs to Superheroes: The Co-Scientist breakthrough isn’t the only example of AI revolutionising healthcare. IDseq is an open-source, cloud-based metagenomics pipeline and service for global pathogen detection and monitoring. Meanwhile, CRyPTIC has scanned the genomes of over 15,000 TB strains to determine the genetic cause of drug-resistant TB. The database is free for anyone to use.
9. In Traffic Management—AI Says No to Jams: Imagine cruising downtown, and every traffic light turns green as you approach. No, this ‘green corridor’ is not magic, but courtesy of SURTRAC, Carnegie Mellon’s AI traffic management system. By analysing real-time data, it reduces wait times by 25% and emissions by 21%. And let’s not forget the hundreds of self-driving cars Waymo is operating in California and Phoenix, while in China, Baidu, Pony.ai, WeRide, and AutoX do the same.
10. In CRM—AI’s Helping Hand as Chatbots: All of us have heard about AI chatbots. Most of us have used those like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. The API from these foundational models are not being lent out to businesses for Customer Relationship Management. But chatbots aren’t just for businesses. Take ElliQ, designed to be an AI companion for the elderly, offers conversation, entertainment, and even reminders for health-related tasks. Then there’s CarePredict, a wearable device that learns a user’s daily pattern and can alert caregivers about deviations in the same, potentially helping save lives.

Choice In Our Hands: Far from the narrative of AI destroying the world, we are heading towards one where AI eradicates rare diseases, helps fight the climate crisis, and where every child, from Bastar to Burkina Faso via Boston, has a personalised tutor in their pocket. This isn’t science fiction anymore, but the lived reality of millions worldwide.

So, the next time anyone screams, “What if AI goes wrong?” counter with, “What if we get it right?” because the absolute truth is that AI doesn’t have inherently good or bad qualities but merely reflects the intentions and values we pour into it. It can perpetuate bias or dismantle it, disrupt industries or create new opportunities, threaten democracy or empower communities. The choice is entirely in our hands.

The future isn’t determined by the naysayers. It is being coded by the scientists, engineers, and dreamers who see AI not as a threat but as a partner in solving humanity’s greatest challenges. They are the ones making sure AI serves as a force for good by amplifying our best qualities and helping us build a brighter, more equitable world.

In case you missed:

• AIoT Explained: The Intersection of AI and the Internet of Things
• A Teen Suicide Spotlights Dangers of Unregulated AI Companions
• Collaboration, Complexity, & Innovation: Understanding Multi-Agent Systems
• When AI Meets Metal: How the Marriage of AI & Robotics Will Change the World
• Generative AI With Memory: Boosting Personal Assistants & Advertising
• When Geniuses Mess Up: AI & Mistakes of Newton, Einstein, Wozniak, Hinton
• The Rise of Personal AI Assistants: Jarvis to ‘Agent Smith’
• The Path to AGI is Through AMIs Connected by APIs
• AI Adoption is useless if person using it is dumb; productivity doubles for smart humans
• You’ll Never Guess What’s Inside NVIDIA’s Latest AI Breakthrough