AGI: Let’s embrace the future for the good of all
AI has become ubiquitous. A tool for some, and a frustration for those seeking original content. Its accuracy is average at best and its usefulness uncertain. Yet we are still in the early days of the technology – the potential far from fulfilled. What is being worked on is the next ambitious step in AI, what is called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Artificial General Intelligence is AI with human-level cognitive capabilities. So, AI able to learn, reason, and solve problems across any domain, much like a person (Baig et al., 2024). This differs from today’s narrow AI systems, which excel in specific tasks but lack general adaptability or true understanding (Mucci & Stryker, 2024). For example, while current AI can translate languages or analyze medical images, these systems cannot transfer their skills outside their training niches. AGI, by contrast, would combine the versatility and learning ability of humans with the speed and precision of machines. Such a profound technological iteration would revolutionize a slew of industries, from medicine to education. Here at prosocial-ai.com, we take a positive view about the influence and potential of AI to improve the common good. Which is why AGI presents such an extraordinary potential resource. Let me explain.
AGI’s Potential Applications in Social Good
Even before achieving true AGI, advanced AI is already being piloted in ways that foreshadow AGI’s transformative benefits for social good. In an AGI future, such benefits could amplify dramatically. Key sectors stand to gain:
Education and Personalized Learning
One of the most promising areas is education. Imagine an AGI-powered tutor that can personalize learning for every student in real time. Such a tutor would adapt to a learner’s style and pace—providing new explanations or challenges as needed—much like a dedicated one-on-one teacher. Early steps toward this vision are already here. For instance, Khan Academy has introduced Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutoring assistant using GPT-4, which is being piloted in hundreds of classrooms (Khan, 2023). This system guides students through problems by asking Socratic questions and providing hints, much as a human tutor would. Teachers report that AI tutors like Khanmigo can keep students engaged and help with homework, while also freeing up teachers’ time by handling routine queries. In the long term, an ethical AGI in education could democratize learning globally—delivering high-quality, personalized education to under-resourced communities and helping bridge gaps in literacy and skills.
Healthcare and Medical Research
Healthcare stands to be revolutionized by AGI’s capacity to synthesize vast medical knowledge and patient data. Current AI systems already outperform experts at certain narrow tasks like scanning x-rays for lung nodules or retinal images for disease. A future AGI doctor could take this further by integrating symptoms, medical images, genetic information, and up-to-date research to diagnose complex conditions with pinpoint accuracy. For example, an AGI might analyze a patient’s symptoms and genetic profile and detect a rare mutation linked to a disease that human doctors overlooked (Raman et al., 2025). It could then suggest personalized treatments, predict risks, and continuously learn from global medical data.
Today’s AI breakthroughs hint at this potential—most notably DeepMind’s AlphaFold, which uses deep learning to predict the 3D structures of proteins, a grand challenge in biology. For more on this click here.
AlphaFold has already revealed the structures of millions of proteins, aiding scientists in understanding diseases and designing new drugs (Zhang et al., 2024). Researchers note that AlphaFold’s AI-driven insights are bridging fundamental science with real-world medical advances, accelerating the discovery of therapies in areas from virology to cancer (Zhang et al., 2024).
If developed responsibly, AGI in healthcare could vastly improve diagnostic speed and accuracy, enable tailored treatments (precision medicine), and advance pharmaceutical research—saving lives and making care more accessible worldwide.
Climate Action and Environmental Protection
Climate action is another domain where advanced AI—and eventually AGI—could deliver game-changing benefits. Climate change presents complex, data-intensive problems, from tracking environmental changes to managing resources. AI is already proving invaluable here. In climate science, AI models can analyze satellite data in milliseconds, far faster than any human. AI helps track the melting of polar ice and icebergs, providing crucial data to climate scientists for monitoring the impacts of global warming and projecting sea-level rise (Masterson, 2024). By automating such analysis (e.g., mapping Antarctic iceberg changes thousands of times faster than a human), AI enables near-real-time environmental monitoring that guides policy and response.
But it is more than just observation, AI assists in climate adaptation and mitigation. In Africa, for example, the United Nations is using AI to help communities in Chad, Sudan, and Burundi predict weather patterns and plan for climate risks (Masterson, 2024). This pilot project employs AI forecasts to guide farmers on planting and water resource management, as well as to implement early warning systems for extreme events. Similarly, AI models improve energy efficiency—optimizing smart grids, forecasting renewable energy output, and reducing waste. One London-based startup has built an AI system that analyzes waste in recycling facilities to identify recyclable material that would otherwise be missed, thus reducing landfill use and emissions (Masterson, 2024).
Future AGI could amplify these efforts by holistically analyzing climate data, modeling complex ecological scenarios, and recommending optimal strategies for sustainability.
Disaster Response and Humanitarian Aid
In the face of natural disasters and humanitarian crises, AGI could dramatically improve our ability to predict events and respond effectively. Current AI initiatives hint at what is possible. In Brazil, a company called Sipremo has deployed AI to forecast natural disasters, predicting when and where floods or landslides might occur (Mucci & Stryker, 2024). Such early warnings enable authorities to evacuate or reinforce areas at risk, potentially saving lives.
When disasters strike, AI can be a force multiplier in emergency response. A collaboration between the World Food Programme and Google demonstrates this: they developed SKAI, an AI-driven platform that analyzes up-to-date satellite imagery to assess building damage after disasters (World Food Programme, n.d.). SKAI rapidly maps destroyed infrastructure and areas of need, providing real-time situational awareness to relief coordinators (World Food Programme, n.d.). In practice, such systems have been used after tropical cyclones, enabling responders to identify which villages were inaccessible or in critical condition.
In an AGI scenario, these capabilities would be even more powerful: an AGI could autonomously coordinate logistics, manage large networks of drones or robots for search-and-rescue, and dynamically resolve bottlenecks in supply delivery.
Social Equity and Poverty Alleviation
AGI could become a pivotal tool for advancing social equity. One recent example emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic in Togo. With families struggling and traditional aid distribution hampered, researchers turned to AI to target assistance. They used machine learning to comb satellite images of communities and combined that with mobile phone data to identify tens of thousands of the poorest households in need of emergency cash aid (Nature Editorial, 2025). Those families received financial relief via mobile payments, and the project was hailed as a “game-changer” in ensuring aid reached those most in need (Nature Editorial, 2025).
Such an approach illustrates how advanced AI can analyze data that humans alone could not easily synthesize—in this case, revealing pockets of poverty that were previously invisible in official surveys.
A future AGI might generalize this capability to ongoing poverty alleviation and policy design. Governments and NGOs could use AGI to continuously analyze economic, health, and education indicators, helping to direct resources more equitably. Moreover, AGI could help reduce human bias in social programs by basing decisions on comprehensive data and fairness criteria.
Long-Term Societal Impacts and Ethical Development of AGI
The advent of AGI will bring not only technological leaps, but also profound societal changes. To ensure these changes are positive, it is crucial that we develop AGI within ethical and inclusive frameworks. Researchers emphasize that AGI’s trajectory must be guided by a focus on transparency, fairness, and human well-being (Raman et al., 2025). This means building explainable AI systems that stakeholders can trust and governing them with policies that protect privacy and prevent misuse.
Equally important is making AGI accessible. If its benefits are concentrated in only a few hands or wealthy nations, AGI could widen inequality—the opposite of a pro-social outcome. Therefore, we advocate for strategies to guarantee equitable access and inclusive growth from AGI, such as investing in education and training so more people can partake in the AI-driven economy (Baig et al., 2024). By proactively planning how workers will adapt (through upskilling and new job creation), society can mitigate potential job displacement and ensure AGI augments, rather than replaces, human work (Raman et al., 2025).
Another cornerstone of ethical AGI is interdisciplinary collaboration. The challenges AGI poses— from deciding moral behavior for autonomous agents to anticipating economic disruptions—require input from engineers, ethicists, social scientists, policymakers, and the public. Broad and inclusive dialogue will help encode diverse values into AGI’s design (Baig et al., 2024) and set norms reflecting collective priorities. Encouragingly, roadmaps are being proposed: one recent scientific report outlines a multidisciplinary approach to AGI that balances innovation with societal responsibility, aiming to “advance societal progress and well-being” while guarding against risks (Raman et al., 2025). This includes research into human-AI interfaces and “collective intelligence” frameworks where AGI complements (rather than suppresses) human judgment (Raman et al., 2025).
In the long term, if we develop AGI responsibly, the upside for humanity is enormous. An ethically aligned AGI could help us solve problems that have vexed us for generations—from curing diseases and reversing climate change to mediating conflicts and designing smarter cities. It could serve as a tireless adviser and partner in every field, amplifying human creativity and compassion. Education could be tailored to every child, governments could make policy with evidence-based foresight, and scientific research could accelerate exponentially. These visions depend on instilling AGI with pro-social values of empathy, justice, and respect for human rights. In short, the pursuit of AGI for social good is not just a technical endeavor but a moral one. With careful, human-centered development and strong ethical guardrails, AGI has the potential to become a powerful force for advancing well-being—creating a more educated, healthy, sustainable, and equitable world for generations to come.
References
Baig, A., Berruti, F., Ellencweig, B., Lewandowski, D., Roberts, R., Yee, L., Singla, A., Smaje, K., Sukharevsky, A., Tilley, J., & Zemmel, R. (2024, March 21). What is artificial general intelligence (AGI)? McKinsey Explainers. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-artificial-general-intelligence-agi
Khan, S. (2023, March 14). Harnessing GPT-4 so that all students benefit: A nonprofit approach for equal access. Khan Academy Blog. https://blog.khanacademy.org/harnessing-ai-so-that-all-students-benefit-a-nonprofit-approach-for-equal-access/
Masterson, V. (2024, February 12). 9 ways AI is helping tackle climate change. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/02/ai-combat-climate-change/
Mucci, T., & Stryker, C. (2024, April 18). Getting ready for artificial general intelligence with examples. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/artificial-general-intelligence-examples
Nature Editorial. (2025, February 26). Combine AI with citizen science to fight poverty. Nature, 638(8052), 860. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00561-x
Raman, R., Kowalski, R., Achuthan, K., Iyer, A., & Nedungadi, P. (2025). Navigating artificial general intelligence development: Societal, technological, ethical, and brain-inspired pathways. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 8443. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-92190-7
World Food Programme. (n.d.). SKAI: Unleashing the power of artificial intelligence to revolutionize disaster response and humanitarian aid [Project description]. Retrieved March 27, 2025, from https://innovation.wfp.org/project/SKAI
Zhang, H., Lan, X., Wang, Y., Lu, Y., Zhang, Y., He, Z., Yang, J., & Chen, L. (2024). AlphaFold2 in biomedical research: facilitating the development of diagnostic strategies for disease. Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, 11, 1414916. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2024.1414916
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