Resources and a call to action
Irina Raicu is the director of the Internet Ethics program () at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Views are her own.
On November 1st, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and cohosted a daylong conference on AI and sustainability. It was titled “AI and the Environment: Sustaining the Common Good,” and it comprised six sessions: “AI’s Environmental Footprint—Development and Usage”; “AI and Water”; “Greening AI”; “AI for Sustainability”; “AI and the Environment: Business Implications”; and “AI, Regulation, and Environmental Law.”
Recordings of all 6 of those panels are now available (each about one hour long). We hope that they will expand the reach of the information and insights presented by the speakers and moderators who participated that day, including professors , , , and ; J; and faculty and staff from eight 糖心破解版 departments—as well as the ethics center.
Much of the data presented will change quickly, as the development and deployment of AI tools at scale continues apace. The overarching issues addressed in the panel conversations, however, are likely to remain and become increasingly critical.
A massive educational effort is required to ensure that more people become aware of AI’s environmental impact (for good and for bad), and can push for more sustainable efforts. AI developers and researchers, regulators, businesspeople, leaders of governments and NGOs, leaders of communities particularly impacted by data center development, environmental activists, and individual users of AI tools, as well as all of us who are subject to AI-augmented decision-making and who need a healthy environment, have a role to play in this effort.
Incentives need to change, and they won’t as long as the benefits of the technologies are touted while the costs are kept undisclosed.
If you have come across these videos and other related resources that we offer, please share them with others. We welcome feedback, and thank you in advance for joining us in this effort.
Image: Nico Crozier & The Bigger Picture (cropped) / Better Images of AI / Seeing the Forest for the Trees / CC-BY 4.0