The climate crisis and rising business costs have made it ever more important to work smarter and in many cases this means businesses adopting AI to do routine jobs rather than using people.

But it is likely that there will be more developments in AI in the next few years that we may not have considered, according to this article.

Among them, it says, are “helping banks make better decisions about loans, or speeding up the search for the new materials we will need in a carbon-free world.”

AI and robotics use may also penetrate further into health and social care.

However, there are warnings about some of the potential dangers of using AI such as in facial recognition, where biases in the programming may lead to some people being denied jobs or insurance cover and even, if applied to drones, creating autonomous killing machines.

It is clear that there will have to be considerable scrutiny and control of the uses to which AI could be put in the future if it is to be a benefit rather than a threat to people.