The European Convergence Summit 2024 focused on the Impact of AI, Big Data and Robotics on CO2 reduction. Our President Dr Monique Calisti gave a keynote presentation opening the ECS 2024 Panel dedicated to exploring positive and negative impacts of AI, Data and Robotics (ADR) technology on the environment. An overview of some main takeaways is provided below and the slides can be downloaded from HERE.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024, the major and most urgent environmental challenges humanity must address are:
These environmental problems have far-reaching consequences, not only for the natural world but also for human societies and economies.
ICT and in particular ADR technologies, either isolated or combined, have a huge potential to help address several environmental challenges across various sectors, by contributing to the improvement of several impactful activities, such as:
ADR technologies and solutions are already in action for the planet in many ways, by allowing for instance predictive analytics for climate modelling and weather forecasting; optimization of energy usage in buildings and industrial processes; advanced CO2/GHG monitoring; informed decision-making for resource management and increased efficiency.
In particular, ADR solutions have the potential to cut global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in other sectors by 15% by 2030: AI alone, for instance, is capable of shaving 5 to 10% off of global GHG emissions.
However, although the positive impact of ADR solutions across a variety of industries is huge, their negative impact cannot be neglected when aiming at Net Zero.
High Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions:
Global resource consumption:
Negative impact on Natural Ecosystems:
E-Waste:
To make sure that the positive effects of digital technologies outweigh their negative impact, it is necessary to act at several levels:
As presented in the Keynote, when zooming into the decarbonisation agenda for ADR technologies, there are several areas that need further work and a multi-stakeholders and multidisciplinary collaborative approach, including energy-efficient algorithms; responsible and optimised data collection and management; greener networks, data centres, edge nodes and devices; life-cycle assessment of ADR systems; biodegradable and sustainable materials for robotics engineering, etc.
In particular, to drive appropriate choices on “if and how to digitalise for the planet”, we need:
Notice that unfortunately, the digital transformation carries an intrinsic risk of severing our understanding and decision-making processes from the unique and situated reality. ADR technologies (especially AI) can exacerbate this risk due to the numerical nature of ML, in combination with the strong forces and interests towards the financialisation and fungibility of natural resources and ecosystems.
This is why the intent to decarbonise ADR technologies results in some practical guidelines that should be applied to ADR system development and operation, such as, for example: 1) couple data extraction and processing with narratives, traces, and explainability; 2) preserve the identity of real-world counterparts of digital entities; 3) keep each individual goal or optimization criterion separate and human-recognisable, avoiding scalarisation pitfalls; and 4) couple numerical prediction or recommendations with alternative sanity checks and refutation procedures – some AI methods such as causal inference can offer that.
Sustainability focuses on minimising our negative impact on the environment, essentially taking what we need without depleting resources. Regeneration, however, goes a step further: it aims to restore and improve the environment, leaving it in a better state than we found it. This is only possible by enforcing a change of perspective in several ways:
In this respect, our vision is that the powerful trio of decarbonised AI, Big Data and Robotics can become the enablement architects of a regenerative future, analysing vast datasets to optimise resource use, guide restoration efforts and allow humans and robots to heal and improve our planet.
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