Source: University of Auckland (UoA)
How can we use artificial intelligence to help the planet – and what impacts might it have along the way?
A panel of experts will explore the opportunities and trade-offs of artificial intelligence (AI) for the environment at an event on Tuesday, 26 August, organised by University of Auckland research centre Juncture: Dialogues on Inclusive Capitalism.
The panel brings together leaders in business, technology, AI, sustainability, planetary accounting, and Indigenous futures. Dr Guy Bate, the Business School’s thematic lead in AI, will facilitate the discussion.
“How could we or should we be using AI and what are its impacts? What are its trade-offs? Is writing a big prompt the same as boiling a kettle? We’re looking to give some perspective on the actual impact of AI and put it into the context of other trade-offs as well,” says Bate.
Artificial intelligence has environmental consequences but can also be a powerful tool for analysing environmental data to help human decision-making, and one of the topics up for discussion is ‘planetary accounting’.
Panellist Mike Merry, Chief Technology Officer at Planetary Insights, utilises planetary accounting, which he likens to carbon accounting but applied across all of nature. This includes not only greenhouse gases, but also waste, water, pollution, biodiversity loss, and deforestation – capturing an overarching picture of human activity on the environment.
Planetary accounting provides sustainability insights into products, services, or organisations within Earth’s environmental limits, and according to Merry, AI can lower the technical barrier for companies to use this approach and support scaling up.
“Organisations have a lot of information about what they do, but they struggle to use this information to understand their environmental impacts.
“AI lowers the technical barrier for businesses to do planetary accounting themselves. For example, there’s some technical knowledge required to be able to say ‘this business activity translates to this sustainability background data’. AI helps to do that at scale, and for businesses to do that themselves.”
However, the environmental impact of AI raises important questions.
Panellist Dr Sasha Maher, a sustainability lecturer at the University of Auckland, has a specialist interest in both market and non-market solutions to climate change mitigation. Maher questions the environmental benefit of using artificial intelligence, saying information is only as good as its uptake.
“We’ve only got so much energy – should we expend all our energy on getting more and more accurate data? And when we know the planet’s burning, do we really need more accuracy?
“And then you could go the other way in that businesses and governments need to make business cases more than ever before; to their citizens and to critics. And so, planetary accounting enables us to get that accuracy … But, of course, it still comes down to human action.”
Bowen Pan and Dr Tania Wolfgramm are also on the panel. Bowen Pan is a product and technology leader best known for creating Facebook Marketplace and leading major product initiatives at Trade Me, Facebook Gaming, Stripe, and Common Room. Dr Wolfgramm is a psychological and social scientist, creative producer, Indigenous futurist and co-founder of Hakamana AI.
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The event is taking place at the University of Auckland Business School from 5.30pm-8pm on 26 August. It’s the second in a new dialogue series offering diverse perspectives on some of the biggest challenges facing New Zealand and the world.
Juncture: Dialogues on Inclusive Capitalism is a Business School research centre exploring how capitalism can better serve people and planet. Through research, education and collaboration, the centre seeks to create opportunities for meaningful dialogues on challenging issues to enable long-term transformation.
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MIL OSI
