AI and sustainability

Will artificial intelligence help or hinder us in developing a sustainable world?

A couple weeks ago, as I was planning the subject of this week’s Green Dispatch, I was originally going to update last year’s sustainable gift giving guide. But once I reviewed last year’s guide, I realized I had nothing new to offer that I didn’t already cover. So if you’re interested, please visit or revisit last year’s guide for sustainable holiday gifts:

A totally green, low-carbon, and affordable (cheap!) gift-giving guide

Also, if you’re wanting sustainable decorations, packaging, and reindeer, Sustainable Jungle offers some helpful tips:

21 Sustainable Christmas Ideas For A Low Carbon Christmas

Now to our regularly scheduled programming.

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Artificial intelligence and sustainability

It seems that it happened almost overnight. We were muddling along, post pandemic, and the next thing you know half the headlines were screaming something about artificial intelligence: how much people feared it (“Even the guy who invented it is afraid of it!!), how it would rob us all, from grocery clerks to clergy, of our jobs, and the almost utopian promises it held. (It’ll parallel park your car, do your taxes, and change your baby’s diapers all at the same time!)

I’ve always been skeptical, perhaps overly so, about the wonders and fears of new developments. My wariness is often rewarded when the new technology bringing our salvation or ruin goes flat. I have only to remember the hype from 20 years ago when Segways were going to transform our cities and change the world to feel secure in my belief that many things don’t pan out as predicted.

Maybe we won’t all lose our jobs, and maybe AI is not going to create a heavenly existence for us all. There are certainly worries that it could be used in all sorts of nefarious ways, and I think these concerns are warranted. Presently, however, I’d like to look at AI’s potential in enhancing sustainability, as well as the environmental problems it may create.

The good part of AI and the environment

Looking at cities, people working in transportation see the ability of AI to better manage traffic when there are crashes or other unexpected hazards. For example, detours are usually a single route, which gets clogged with the additional traffic. AI could manage multiple detour routes in real time. Your GPS could notify you of a hazard or traffic jam, as it does now, but—taking all the traffic as a whole—AI could route all the cars in multiple detours in the most efficient manner. And if self-driving cars become more of a norm, some predict that AI could route them more efficiently than the current routing systems used now.