As one of the world’s toughest challenges, combating climate change is another area where AI has transformational potential — Victoria Masterson, Senior Writer, World Economic Forum

Step right up folks! Don’t miss the investment opportunity of a lifetime. Buy that luxury car. Take that dream vacation…blah, blah, blah

I’m not one of the big investors who are currently throwing so much money at Artificial Intelligence (AI) development that, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, they’ve created a stock bubble that’s propping up America’s eroding economy. Krugman and others have likened the AI investment craze to the 1990s dot-com bubble that burst so spectacularly.

Like the carnival barkers of old, AI’s boosters loudly extol its potential marvels: It will cure cancer, end poverty, hunger and wars and, of course, “solve climate change.”

But will it? Let’s examine the last claim.

In her World Economic Forum’s online article, “9 ways AI is helping tackle climate change,” author Victoria Masterson writes that “AI has been trained to measure changes in [large Antarctic] icebergs 10,000 times faster than humans could do it.” AI can also map deforestation and aid in predicting weather disasters.

In short, AI can help us track and respond to the effects of climate change, which could be useful for trying to survive this ubiquitous menace, but does nothing to “solve” the problem.

To be fair, toward the end of her article Masterson says AI can help industry decarbonize and can guide drones reseeding Brazil’s desiccated rain forests. While these examples of AI’s miraculous curative powers at least describe ways it could assist us in addressing the root cause of the climate crisis — carbon pollution — they rely on shaky assumptions about motivation and effectiveness.

Why, for example, would polluting industries, which for the most part have shown no interest in cutting short-term profits for remote goals such as ensuring civilization’s survival, be motivated to act on suggestions made by an AI bot? Concerning effectiveness, can scattered seeds grow into mature, carbon-absorbing trees in a rainforest that is already dying from drought?

According to the tech industry, everything is not only possible, but inevitable, including AI’s takeover of every aspect of our lives and environment. No need to pass rules and regulations or initiate programs to drastically reduce carbon emissions. No need for messy politics. There’ll be a technofix for everything — if we just keep throwing money at the industry.  

But here’s the reality.

Many of the consequences of human-induced global warming, though we might be able to slow them, are now unavoidable. Rainforests are dying all over the world. Sea-level rise is flooding Bangladesh and beginning to inundate Florida. Long term, crop-destroying drought is settling into the world’s vast breadbaskets, including most of America’s Midwest which currently prides itself on “feeding the world,” but could soon be overwhelmed by conditions that will make a 1930s Dust Bowl sky look like an overcast day.

What’s the tech industry doing about it? Rushing to build huge, energy-hogging AI “factories” that drain our public utilities’ electricity supply. While the tech companies could build their own solar farms to power their factories, why would they spend the money and take the time to do so when they can commandeer the public’s power at quantity discount rates while racing against each other to dominate the technology?

How is their electricity produced? Under the Trump administration, which is striving to revive long shuttered coal-powered plants, it’s increasingly produced with fossil fuels. Rather than solving or even slowing climate change, AI development is giving it a shot in the arm.

So this average Joe won’t invest in AI. But I will buy some additional supplies for my household emergency kit.

Find this article others about climate change and humanity’s future on my Firebird Journal blog (firebirdjournal.com)