aiin perspective

Society

Health, science, education and everyday life.

Research reviewed 13 September 2026

Examples of useful AI already studied or made available

Breast screening in Sweden

AI-supported radiologists, compared with standard double reading.

+29%screening-detected cancers
−44%screen-reading workload

MASAI randomized trial, about 106,000 women; 2026 update. These results do not establish lower mortality.

Earlier flood forecasts

Similar or better reliability for extreme river floods in watersheds without local gauges.

Nature study, 2024. Forecast accuracy, not a measured number of lives saved; warnings still need to reach people.

A public resource for biology

200M+

Predicted protein structures made freely available through AlphaFold’s database.

Protein sequence→Predicted shape→Experiments

2022 database expansion, documented by EMBL-EBI in 2023. Predictions help researchers investigate biology; they are not experimentally confirmed structures or approved treatments.

Education trials: what helped students, and what didn’t →

Teacher-supported tutoring in Nigeria

+0.31 SD

Higher combined English, AI-knowledge and digital-skills scores after six weeks.

World Bank randomized trial. Standard deviations measure effect size; this is not a 31% gain. Result is for the full programme, including teachers.

AI-assisted maths practice in Türkiye

Change relative to respective control outcomes

+48%practice grades
−17%later unaided exam grades

A tutor with teacher-designed safeguards largely removed the harm, without establishing a positive unaided-exam effect.

Access is still unequal.

2.2B

people were offline in 2025.

Online 74%   Offline 26%

ITU estimate; one person = 1% of world population. Internet access is not AI access or AI literacy.

Using AI is different from trusting it.

Share of respondents · 2025 report

Use AI with some regularity66
Willing to trust AI46

48,340 respondents across 47 countries.

University of Melbourne / KPMG survey, Nov 2024–Jan 2025. Self-reports; samples are not a census of humanity and some overrepresent university education.

72%of UK respondents said laws and regulation would increase their comfort with AI.

Separate Ada Lovelace / Alan Turing survey: 3,513 people. A public preference, not evidence a particular law works.

Bias can persist in a model’s judgments.

Dialect cue→Different judgments

A Nature study found discriminatory judgments associated with African American English in tested models.

Controlled prompts and models, not a measured real-world hiring-discrimination rate.

Evidence-based dialogue can help.

≈20% lower

Belief in a chosen conspiracy theory after personalized AI conversations.

Science study; effects persisted at two months. Belief ratings among participants, not a 20% reduction in society’s misinformation.

Teach people to check the answer

Verify claims against original sources. In education, measure learning without AI as well as assisted performance.

Make sensitive decisions accountable

Test across affected groups, limit sensitive data, document failures and give people access to human review and an appeal.

Include the people affected

Assess affordability, language and accessibility. For infrastructure, publish local resource data and give communities a role in decisions.

How the evidence was selected

Primary university studies, government and intergovernmental reports, ethical-AI research and company disclosures published from September 2021–September 2026. This is a curated guide, not an exhaustive systematic review. Older underlying data are labelled.

Estimates, forecasts, surveys and observed results are kept distinct. Company claims are identified as disclosures. Charts are redrawn from cited data, with rounded values and calculated shares labelled; no missing years are interpolated.

Industry comparisons show scope and date because electricity, onsite water and supply-chain footprints are different measures. Findings do not automatically generalize beyond the studied people, products or settings.

Sources59 sources

Each “Notes” button gives the finding, scope and limits.

Download source ledger ↗
59 sources
2025 · Modelled estimate & scenarios

Energy and AI ↗

International Energy Agency

2025 · Peer-reviewed field study

Generative AI at Work ↗

Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond · Quarterly Journal of Economics

Research notes