Yes, believe it or not, AI can be incredibly helpful to the future of humanity—if it's used correctly. And that "if" is the size of a small mountain.

I don't have to tell you about all the harm AI is doing / can do / will do / might do if it gets bored destroying our lives in other ways. (Just be ready for your Roomba™ to assassinate your dog for "funsies.") But this doesn't mean AI can't be used to better the world and humanity. It absolutely can if it's trained the correct way and overseen by the right kind of people.

Currently, it's not. (Mostly.)

So here's proof—an example of how AI can help make a better world. Thanks to climate change, the world's oceans are rising and destroying the lives of coastal communities. The UN estimates a mere 1.2 billion people might be displaced or treading water by 2050.

A company called Coastal Assembly has come up with a technique for using AI to fight coastal erosion and keep the ocean at bay. How could that be? Artificial intelligence can punch waves? …Well, kinda.

In the Maldives, the company's AI analyzed 10 years of satellite imagery, currents and erosion patterns. It's a gargantuan amount of data that humans can't analyze quickly, nor find the complicated patterns. But AI can. Next, the AI was able to predict how best to interrupt the erosion patterns, thereby saving and growing the beach.

"…the company designed and installed 54 structures cast from marine concrete blended with sand and crushed shells, arranged in a row of hexagons. The structure is specially designed to break up eroding waves while allowing the flow of currents that accumulate sand and sediment."

It has already had the desired effect—extending the beach 90 feet.

AI is a tool like a chainsaw. It can be used to build a house, or it can be used to chop up your neighbor into tiny pieces. It all depends on who's using it and what their goals are. AI in the proper hands can help design far more efficient and useful systems and predict how to create a better future.

For example, we waste ungodly amounts of clean, fresh water. AI could design systems that reduce water waste and reuse the clean water.

In the US, we throw out 40% of all food, nearly 60 million tons a year! AI could engineer systems that heavily reduce that if we let it.

We could use it to design communities based on stability and health instead of surveillance and exploitation. We could use it to improve health treatments and reduce costs.

But so far, we mostly use AI to help us cheat on exams and bomb schoolchildren in Iran, to send a vapid email to a vapid friend, to figure out which employees to fire because they're more likely to get sick in the future, or to pump out an image of my uncle dressed as a frog. You know, the important stuff.