Health, finance, and media offer a glimpse of the applied-AI future.

Since the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, businesses have shown a range of responses, from curiosity and experimentation to large-scale integration. Industry leaders see enormous potential to work faster and more efficiently. American businesses are “all in on AI,” with U.S. private investment in AI topping $109 billion in 2024.

Applied AI — the practical implementation of AI to solve real-world problems and achieve specific goals — is where this emerging technology will create value. This spring, Luminary Labs talked with more than 50 experts in a wide variety of industries about applied AI and conducted a preliminary analysis of market size, growth potential, and AI readiness.

Across the board, these experts agree that applied AI is already here, and will have a seismic impact on distinct industries and the economy as a whole. The AI revolution is in progress, but the way it happens — and its ultimate impact — is far from certain.

To be sure, there are concerns and threats to mitigate: Applied AI presents existential risk to individuals, careers, and even entire industries. It will reshape society, and if it’s not implemented thoughtfully, it could exacerbate existing inequalities, climate impacts, and geopolitical instability. But the AI revolution may also usher in significant possibilities to create value, and it’s important to understand the context and opportunities across sectors. Leaders should prepare to engage with emerging tools and technologies in a way that brings prosperity to industries and communities around the world.

To that end, we offer a look at three industries that have an outsized impact on America’s economy and society, and share a glimpse of how applied AI could transform life and work.

Health

In the United States, healthcare is the fastest-growing industry and employs 22 million people. Another 2 million work in life sciences. This broad sector — which includes hospital systems, pharmaceuticals, home health and elder care services, and digital health tech companies — faces critical challenges that AI can help address.

America’s population is aging: The birth rate is at its lowest point in a century, and people 85 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the population. As the aging population continues to grow, the U.S. will need a larger, more efficient workforce that can better serve patients and caregivers. Clinician burnout has reached crisis levels, particularly following the pandemic, with administrative burdens consuming inordinate amounts of providers’ time. And in biotech, the research and development costs for a new drug are astronomical — from $314 million to $4.46 billion.

Applied AI tools may offer transformative solutions to these challenges. In medical fields with workforce shortages, AI-powered workflow optimization and automated documentation systems could significantly reduce administrative burden, allowing existing staff to focus on direct patient care. Enhanced clinical decision support systems, like Mount Sinai’s early sepsis identification system and NYUTron’s readmission prediction model, could improve patient outcomes while reducing provider burden. (On an even larger scale, the U.K.’s National Health Service recently trained an AI model on 57 million patient records to predict disease diagnoses and critical health events.) For older Americans, AI-enabled remote patient monitoring and smart scheduling systems can help optimize limited resources, allowing the home health sector to extend its reach. In life sciences, AI has enabled growth of in silico drug development models; as a result, biotech companies can use fewer resources to advance promising therapeutics.

Finance

The financial services industry is a bedrock of the U.S. economy, accounting for 6.7 million jobs and more than 7% of gross domestic product. Home to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, as well as many of the world’s largest investment banks, hedge funds, and asset management firms, the U.S. serves as a global hub for finance. Importantly, the finance industry is evolving beyond its traditional banking roots: In 2024, the U.S. led the world in fintech investment, representing $50.7 billion across 1,836 deals. On Forbes’ global list of the top fintech companies, 48 out of 50 entities are based in the United States.

While fintech companies are thriving, traditional banking institutions are facing competitive pressure to embrace digital transformation and adopt new technologies. Across the industry, market volatility, global uncertainty, and cybersecurity threats are growing concerns. While executives of some large banks ended 2024 optimistic after the presidential election, the early months of the Trump administration have left Wall Street anxious about the uncertainty of tariffs, inflationary policies, and weak consumer sentiment.

Applied AI presents transformative opportunities across the financial sector, which relies heavily on large sets of data. With machine learning and applied AI, those massive data troves could be used to create innovative new offerings for customers. Financial institutions are already implementing AI for fraud prevention and security, legal services, trading and portfolio optimization, and enhanced customer interactions through AI agents. And since many financial sector jobs are in computer-related and management occupations, there is significant potential for AI to reshape workflows while creating new opportunities. Responsible AI adoption could help ensure America maintains its competitive edge in global finance.

Media

Media and culture — encompassing advertising, television and film, music and entertainment, and publishing — is critical to America’s brand, as well as its economy. The $649 billion U.S. media and entertainment market is the largest in the world, and the industry employs 2 million people. In addition, advertising, public relations, and related services employ nearly half a million Americans. And like many sectors, media is at an inflection point. Major industry consolidations like Omnicom’s $13.5 billion merger with Interpublic, in parallel with significant workforce turmoil and challenging market dynamics, are likely to fundamentally change the industry.

AI presents both transformative opportunities and existential challenges for creative industries. AI tools can enhance creative workflows, personalize content at scale, and unlock new business models, as demonstrated by the New York Times’ Echo tool and advertising agencies’ investments exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars in AI capabilities. On the other hand, creative roles face unprecedented pressure, with generative AI directly threatening traditionally billable services such as copywriting, graphic design, photography, and video production. Figma recently announced new AI-powered tools for creating sites, app prototypes, and marketing assets, and Meta sees opportunities to fully automate advertising strategy and campaign production. The potential impacts extend beyond paid advertising: Generative AI tools like ChatGPT now include web search capabilities and act as discovery engines, prompting a recent drop in Google’s search traffic.

Unions representing creative workers recognize these new threats, and are actively fighting AI adoption through collective bargaining processes; AI was a contentious and highly visible issue for workers during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in 2023. Any effective applied AI strategy in creative media must carefully navigate workers’ rightful concerns: job displacement, bias and inaccuracy risks, intellectual property infringement, and data privacy, among others. Bridging the gap between AI innovators and established players could help transform potential disruption into strategic advantage for American industries.