Artificial Intelligence use cases adopted by people and their impact on achieving sustainable development goals: a systematic review

List of Authors

  1. Vijay Palliyil ,  
  2. Meng Cai ,  
  3. Hiba Karam ,  
  4. Lalita Phatthanachaisuksiri ,  
  5. Niklas Suhre ,  
  6. Eva Kaßens-Noor
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Abstract

Individuals are increasingly integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their lives, adopting various use cases in healthcare, education, urban mobility, and more. AI has the potential to enhance efficiency, well-being, and societal progress, but it also has negative potential associated with ethical challenges, privacy concerns, and social inequality. A significant research gap remains in understanding the impacts of AI use cases adopted by people on SDG achievement. This study addresses that gap through a systematic analysis of whether AI adoption by people supports or hinders progress toward the SDGs. Using the PRISMA framework, we conducted a systematic review of 131 studies. The results show that the overall impact of AI use cases adopted by individuals on the SDGs is moderately positive. These use cases significantly contribute to areas such as healthcare, innovation, and sustainable urban development, yet their effects remain complex and context dependent. While individually adopted AI fosters efficiency and well-being in many domains, concerns about job displacement, biased decision-making, and misinformation highlight the need for responsible deployment. The study emphasizes the importance of ethical AI governance, equitable access, and AI literacy to ensure its positive contribution to sustainable development. Future research should not only empirically evaluate the real-world impacts of AI applications adopted by people from a sustainability perspective but also explore and develop strategies to mitigate negative impacts on progress toward the SDGs while maximizing their positive contributions. This research contributes to the evolving discourse on AI adoption by people and its implications for sustainable development.

Corresponding author
Eva Kaßens-Noor
0000-0002-4311-7239
Grant information

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number [101087218] (Urban scAInce: why and how cities transform through artificial intelligence and their associated technologies [scAInce]).

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Copyright
© 2026 Vijay Palliyil (Co-Author); Meng Cai (Co-Author); Hiba Karam (Co-Author); Lalita Phatthanachaisuksiri (Co-Author); Niklas Suhre (Co-Author); Eva Kaßens-Noor (Corresponding Author, Co-Author) Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Amendment

We revised the manuscript in response to both reviewers to improve conceptual clarity and methodological transparency.

First, we clarified what we mean by individual-level AI adoption. We now define this as AI use cases that individuals voluntarily choose based on personal preferences and perceived benefits, in contrast to AI systems deployed at wider organizational or city levels (Introduction; Methods).

Second, we refined and justified our SDG-linkage approach, with particular attention to SDG 9. We now explain that when the narratives around individual-level AI use cases focused on innovation-related or innovation-enabling contributions (for example, enabling access to digitally mediated services or supporting technological upgrading through novel digital tools), we linked those use cases to SDG 9. We also clarified when and why a use case was linked to multiple SDGs (Methods).

Third, we expanded the explanation of the search strategy and screening process. We clarified why we used a broad search string to maximize recall and how precision was ensured through predefined inclusion/exclusion criteria applied at title/abstract screening and full-text eligibility stages (Methods).

Fourth, we strengthened the limitations discussion by noting that restricting searches to Web of Science and ScienceDirect may limit coverage of relevant studies indexed elsewhere (e.g., IEEE Xplore or Google Scholar), and that single-reviewer screening may introduce selection bias. We also clarified mitigation steps for the latter, including systematic application of predefined criteria across stages and team discussion to resolve ambiguous cases consistently (Methods; Limitations/Discussion).

Finally, we clarified how AI use cases were extracted and labeled across heterogeneous terminology (Methods) and incorporated suggested references to strengthen the methodological positioning and the discussion of responsible and ethical AI (Methods; Discussion).

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Authors & roles

Vijay Palliyil

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, 64287, Germany

Roles
Co-Author, Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing
0000-0001-8467-7542

Meng Cai

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, 64287, Germany

Roles
Co-Author, Conceptualization, Methodology, Project Administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing
0000-0002-8318-572X

Hiba Karam

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, 64287, Germany

Roles
Co-Author, Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing
0009-0000-2882-2143

Lalita Phatthanachaisuksiri

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, 64287, Germany

Roles
Co-Author, Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing

Niklas Suhre

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, 64287, Germany

Roles
Co-Author, Methodology, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing
0009-0006-4168-1115

Eva Kaßens-Noor

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, 64287, Germany

School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 48824, USA

Roles
Corresponding Author, Co-Author, Conceptualization, Data Curation, Funding Acquisition, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing
0000-0002-4311-7239

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