Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) now plays a critical role in almost every area of our daily lives and academic disciplines due to the growth of computing power, advances in methods and techniques, and the explosion of the amount of data; medicine is not an exception. Rather than replacing clinicians, AI is augmenting the intelligence of clinicians in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment decisions.

Summary: Kidney disease is a substantial medical and public health burden globally, with both acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease bringing about high morbidity and mortality as well as a huge economic burden. Even though the existing research and applied works have made certain contributions to more accurate prediction and better understanding of histologic pathology, there is a lot more work to be done and problems to solve.

Key messages: AI applications of diagnostics and prognostics for high-prevalence and high-morbidity types of nephropathy in medical-resource-inadequate areas need special attention; high-volume and high-quality data need to be collected and prepared; a consensus on ethics and safety in the use of AI technologies needs to be built.