AI Thinks It Can End World Hunger

The AI analyzed 500,000 research papers. Its goal was to identify strategies proven to be effective in reducing hunger. A literature review of this size would have taken a human years to complete.

Although that sounds like a lot of money, it really isn't. It is only 2% of what the United States spends on their military each year.

These results are supported by research completed by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization and the German Center for Development Research.

In a press release, Maximo Torero, who is Chief Economist at FAO said:

"The world produces enough food to feed everyone. So it’s unacceptable that 690 million people are undernourished, 2 billion don’t have regular access to sufficient amounts of safe, nutritious food, and 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets. If rich countries double their aid commitments and help poor countries to prioritize, properly target and scale up cost effective interventions on agricultural R&D, technology, innovation, education, social protection and on trade facilitation, we can end hunger by 2030."

For example, it determined that small farmers in water-scarce areas are especially vulnerable. The AI suggested investing in livestock and mobile access in these areas. Mobile data could give farmers critical information about rain.

The conclusions of the AI reflected problematic biases in the research. For example, the AI failed to understand the importance of women farmers and establishing gender equality. Research on that topic is relatively new, and not well represented in the research papers. The AI also over-emphasized crop yields and de-emphasized improving well-being. Again, this change in research is a recent shift in focus.

AI alone cannot solve this problem. But, humans have a hard time keeping up with all of the research. But together, AI and human researchers can find a solution.

h/t: Gizmodo