Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Solutions: Placing the Climate Emergency at the Center of AI Developments

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic has caused the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression. It has underscored the need to rethink what type of economy and society we want to build as we face the worsening climate emergency. Europe is leading the way in developing strategies for a Green Recovery, and a newly published Communication by the European Commission stresses the crucial role of the “twin transition”, green and digital, both at the top of the EU’s political agenda. However, they also acknowledge that digital technologies will bring additional environmental burdens to them. Despite growing attention to the environmental costs of information communication technology systems, Artificial Intelligence gets principally heralded as the key technology to solve contemporary challenges, including the environmental crisis, which is one of the goals of sustainable development, but how green is Artificial Intelligence? And, considering that the most important international framework to achieve sustainability is enshrined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is AI enabling or hindering SDGs specifically related to sustainable environmental development? This chapter considers the materiality of AI and attempts to go beyond mainstream hypes as it explores the multifaceted ways in which AI is impacting the climate emergency, thus impacting sustainable environmental development. It concludes by offering a set of solutions to limit the direct challenges that AI poses to SDGs.