AI and environmental injustice
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be an important tool for sustainable development to minimize energy usage in large factories or to predict natural disasters before they happen. However, these uses can also have a downside. For example, training and tuning AI models produces carbon emissions that harm the environment.
The Sustainable AI Lab team is honoured by the invitation of the UN to have a presence in Glasgow at COP26 (Conference of the Parties). This presence provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the environmental injustice issues related to AI, not only the impacts of making and using AI on climate change, but also who will bear the burden of these costs. To do so, the team is very excited to work together with artist Roosmarijn Pallandt to bring a new perspective on the much needed discussion around the development of AI and the impact this has on nature and climate change.
The artwork "Lights sounds Air"
Every night, after the delegations have left, the entire conference space will be immersed in a sound composition made from the vibrations of plants and trees as they pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, transforming light into oxygen. This art installation is made by Roosmarijn Pallandt in collaboration with Patrick Farmer. They have used the recording of sounds of plants and trees in the UK, allowing us to hear the sounds of nature regenerating itself that are otherwise impossible to hear with the human ear.
“The artwork makes it possible to hear and feel the restorative power of nature that is normally hidden from us. We believe that it is easier to ignore what we are not aware of and so far that’s what makes it possible to ignore the effects of AI on nature,” says Prof. Aimee van Wynsberghe. “We can no longer do this; the effects of climate change have gone too far and we shouldn’t see AI as the solution to all our problems. The artwork brings us closer to nature and makes us think about how AI is constraining nature’s ability to heal itself.”
Regenerating the entire conference space at night, the artwork alludes to the collective power of imagination and the possibility of re-evaluating our place in the universe. “This is an amazing example of what the Bonn Sustainable AI Lab, and collaborative partners, have to offer. The creativity of artists helps us to explore new research fields and to think outside our regular patterns,” says Aimee van Wynsberghe.
Aimee van Wynsberghe will be speaking at COP26 on November 10th at 11:00 to 11:45 in the blue zone, UNFCCC pavilion.
About the artist Roosmarijn Pallandt
About the Sustainable AI Lab
The Sustainable AI Lab is a space for excellent researchers from different fields to work, collaborate, and brainstorm about the environmental, social, and economic costs of designing, developing, and using AI across society. The questions to be explored span multiple disciplines and levels of analysis, for example: the normative rationale for the value of sustainability; the strength of the concept of sustainability; how to measure the environmental costs of AI; understanding the intergenerational impacts of AI; and inform public policy guidelines for the development of green, proportionate, and sustainable uses of AI.
Within the Lab the scientists will be conducting experiments that are always project-based, with their own characteristics and with a multi-stakeholder perspective. The laboratory is diverse, inclusive, and international, and the experiments are driven internally and externally. The lab is made possible through funding from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. Together, the team is working to strengthen Germany as an excellence hub for research dedicated to the ethics of AI.
The official launch of the Sustainable AI Lab is on November 25th 2021.
Web: https://sustainable-ai.eu/
Media Inquiries for interviews with Prof. Aimee van Wynsberghe:
Edwin Bos (PR-manager ad interim)
+31613567252
