Creating Societal Impact with AI

With the rapid rise and widespread adoption of AI across industry sectors in recent years, there is no doubt about the immense potential of the technology.  The question is: how can we effectively harness the power of AI to deliver tangible societal benefits?

A healthy population is the cornerstone of a society’s wellbeing and quality of life. Integrating AI into the healthcare sector has the potential to unlock significant benefits that directly serve the public. The Hartree Centre has partnered with the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust to pioneer AI technologies for optimising patient outcomes, and also worked on several other projects to improve patient care. For instance, we have worked with Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group, the Innovation Agency and University of Liverpool to facilitate the prediction of hospital admissions for patients with alcohol-related illnesses using AI. By applying machine learning to build models based on diagnoses, patient history and demographic data, we developed a tool that automatically flags high-risk patients, allowing health services to direct appropriate interventions to these patients quickly. In addition to predicting hospital admissions, AI can be an effective tool for automating repetitive tasks. These not only boost efficiency but also reduce the strain on health workers, enabling them to focus more on patient care. The benefits of AI are amplified when coupled with other advanced digital technologies such as quantum computing. This convergence of technologies can help us overcome diseases with faster and more accurate detection and diagnosis that helps healthcare workers deliver prompt and personalised care to patients.  These examples clearly demonstrate how AI can transform the healthcare sector to better serve society.

AI can also play a significant role in increasing our resilience against natural disasters that are becoming more severe and frequent as a result of climate change. AI has been crucial in our work on the Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo), a digital twin demonstrator project aimed at improving climate and extreme weather resilience across infrastructure networks by preventing damages and securing the reliability of critical services like telecommunications, energy, water and other utilities. From optimising weather models for faster processing to increasing the accuracy of simulations through large-scale data processing, AI can help bolster the UK’s resilience against severe climate events including floods, droughts and storms.

As demonstrated in the above examples, AI is a valuable asset for the public sector. To maximise societal benefits from using AI in the public sector, it is important not only to advance AI technologies, but also consider other avenues that contribute to the effective and responsible use of AI. These include upskilling the workforce, fostering cross-sector collaboration, and exploring opportunities for technology convergence. We achieve these through partnerships and programmes such as Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) and BridgeAI. These programmes offer funding opportunities for companies to work with our technical experts, where we help them identify and develop solutions using AI or other digital technologies, or even a combination of them. Through these collaborations, we not only support companies in problem-solving but also empower employees through improved digital literacy, which is fundamental to digital innovation. Alongside our funding opportunities, we also offer training in the form of self-paced courses, online and in-person workshops and programming schools. We are committed to helping companies use AI effectively and responsibly, and will continue to work with our industry and public sector partners to deliver meaningful societal benefits for the UK.