AI and Sustainability

Artificial Intelligence is progressing due to the increasing demand for businesses to be more efficient with their processes and outputs. AI has been at the forefront of this century’s technology advancements through its application in what once were unthinkable systems like summoning Alexa to play your Spotify playlist for you. 

While AI contributes to businesses’ productivity by streamlining processes, mitigating errors and risks, and increasing work volume, it raises important questions and concerns about its effects on society. Some would even argue that AI is a threat to human capital. An even more pressing issue is technology’s role in climate change and biodiversity loss.

Over the years, technology advances have played an important role in improving the quality of human life. All these enhancements contributed to economic growth but at the same time have negatively impacted our planet.  While IgnitusAI is all for hyperagility and being quick to respond to change, we acknowledge the importance of addressing the deteriorating health of our environment. We believe that AI technology can reform the whole landscape altogether and truly drive this advocacy forward with the help of data, solutions backed by human intelligence, and genuine thirst for positive change.

In PwC’s research on “How AI Can Enable A Sustainable Future”, they have laid out scientific evidences that Earth systems are under unprecedented environmental stress:

• Climate Change. Today’s greenhouse gas levels may be the highest in 3 million years. If current Paris Agreement pledges are kept, global average temperatures in 2100 are still expected to be 3°C above pre-industrial levels, well above the 1.5C threshold needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
• Biodiversity. The Earth is rapidly losing its biodiversity at “mass extinction” rates, such that species’ populations have declined by around 60% since 1970.
• Deforestation. Current deforestation rates in the Amazon Basin could lead to an 8% drop in regional rainfall by 2050, triggering a shift to a “savannah state”, with wider consequences for the Earth’s atmospheric circulatory systems.
• Oceans. The chemistry of the oceans is changing faster than at any point in perhaps 300 million years. The resulting acidification and rising temperatures of the ocean is having an unprecedented impact on corals and fish stocks.
• Nitrogen cycle. We are suffering from arguably the largest and most rapid impact on the nitrogen cycle for 2.5 billion years, as widespread nitrogen and phosphate pollution from fertilizers has washed into seas. This has affected fish stocks and created so-called “dead zones” in 10% of the world’s oceans.
• Water. The global water cycle is facing similarly severe impacts through over abstraction and uncontrolled pollution, with related analysis suggesting that the world may face a 40% shortfall in the freshwater needed to support the global economy by 2030.
• Clean air. Around 91% of the world’s people live in places that fail to meet World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines.

All these are serious impacts on the planet brought about by human activity that need to be reversed urgently. Artificial Intelligence, when harnessed the right way, is considered to have a pivotal role in transformational efforts to solve the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. AI can potentially drive global environmental efforts forward by C02 removal, developing green urban mobility, precise extreme weather condition monitoring for better disaster response, monitoring deforestation, and energy emission reduction detection. 

Here are more examples of how AI can be a vehicle to achieve environmental sustainability.

Figure 1: Priority action areas for environmental challenges; Image Source: PwC 

Some companies took advantage of AI capabilities in their efforts to create environmental change:

• Google uses an AI model ‘Deepmind” to reduce the energy load of its data centers, reducing the energy cost of cooling by 40%.
• Global Fishing Watch, a platform developed by Google, SkyTruth, and Oceana, uses machine learning to train the system to identify suspicious boat activity at sea to prevent IUU fishing (illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing).
• IBM uses AI for more precise weather forecasts. Their 30% more accurate predictions help renewable energy companies manage their plants better and increase energy production while reducing carbon emissions.
• PrevisAI, co-developed by Microsoft using artificial intelligence to predict deforestation hotspots, has identified nearly 10,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon that’s in imminent danger, and is urging counter measures and preventive actions from local governments, corporations and nonprofits.

IgnitusAI triggers and executes transformations that help businesses become hyperagile, empowering them to identify options and seize opportunities while keeping the future generations and the whole environmental landscape in mind. We focus on longevity, sustainability, and future-proofing your solutions and strategies.

In operations, your sustainability is your accountability for social and ecological impacts around you, and accurately reporting your activities in those regards to your stakeholders; and the key to your sustainability strategy is auditable data availability. We can help you harness more AI and operate more sustainably.

For more information, visit www.ignitus.ai