AI will help fight against climate change, Google's DeepMind executive says

(Bloomberg) --Artificial intelligence has the potential to accelerate world-altering innovations such as "limitless" clean energy and better meteorological models that help people deal with the effects of climate change, Google DeepMind executive Colin Murdoch said.

"We're using AI to predict weather — much more accurate weather predictions to help communities and companies around the world adapt to increasingly extreme weather," Murdoch, the chief business officer of the Alphabet Inc. AI unit, said on BNN Bloomberg Television.

Read More: AI Has Silicon Valley on Another Manic Quest to Change the World

Murdoch, who was visiting Toronto for the Collision technology conference, also lauded a partnership between Google DeepMind and the University of Toronto in medicine. Researchers are using AI to better understand proteins in the human body in an effort to advance liver cancer treatments, he said. 

Artificial intelligence needs regulation, but it must be done thoughtfully, Murdoch added. "It's an extremely powerful technology so we have to take exceptional care," he said. "We spend a lot of time thinking about the most effective regulation — regulation that allows innovation."

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