Once a term exclusively reserved for technology correspondents, few days go by now without artificial intelligence (AI) making headlines in some way.
A statement released by the AI Safety Center last week warned that AI could lead to the extinction of humanity.
Less dramatically, a recent analysis of publicly traded company earnings reports by the emissions data platform Minimum found that the debate around AI is on the rise.
The study found that mentions of “generative AI” surged 1,584% from Q3 to Q4 of 2022.
The study also found that AI was mentioned more often than key ESG terms such as “climate change” and “greenhouse gases” in investor calls over the past four quarters.
In an email, Minimum co-founder Freddie Evans said sustainability and AI are two of the most pressing themes for business leaders today.
With this in mind, what are the key sustainability areas where AI can contribute to creating a greener and cleaner tomorrow?
Will Cavendish, digital services lead at Arup, said that as we continue to develop and use AI, we also want to be aware of the risks that need to be properly addressed.
Cavendish added that whenever a new technology is developed that is clearly beneficial and safe, there is an ethic to use it for good.
In particular, AI has particularly powerful applications in the built environment, he said.
He added that it can address some of the major challenges caused by population growth, extreme weather and the need to build more resilient and inclusive urban spaces.
“A lot of it is driven by the transportation industry,” he said in an interview with Forbes.
“Electric, connected, and self-driving cars inherently have a digital mesh around them. Without AI, you can’t navigate that digital mesh because it just doesn’t work when you have a human at the center of it. ”
Cavendish added that as energy grids move to low-carbon systems, they are moving to AI and machine learning to manage supply and demand.
“It will be a world of intermittent renewable generation on a much smaller scale,” he says.
“It’s going to be a very different grid pattern, and operators need to be able to understand it and optimize it.”
He added that demand is also growing for AI-enabled traffic management systems that can start predicting road closures in the event of an accident and notify emergency services when needed.
Cavendish added that it also has applications in making cities more resistant to extreme weather.
He said that in places like Shanghai, Arup is using AI to calculate the best locations to deploy nature-based solutions, optimizing the number of green spaces and helping to absorb water. He said he has been working.
And in Albania, Arup is currently designing orbital forests for cooling around the city of Tirana.
“This will undoubtedly be the future of architectural design, and over time it will become more widely incorporated into district and city design,” Cavendish said.
“AI can really augment human behavior and produce better solutions than before.”
Another sustainability area that could benefit is waste management.
JD Ambati, founder and CEO of EverestLabs, said the field is “a pretty perfect target to harness the power of AI.”
“AI will enable complex industrial systems to understand finite levels of data in minutes,” Ambati said in an interview with Forbes.
“If you’re wondering, ‘Should I put an AI system in place to manage plant operations and improve recovery rates? does not destroy anything.
EverestLabs has developed an operating system that collects vast amounts of data for accurate sustainability reporting.
According to the company, this could save the facility more than 60% in costs and increase the recyclable volume recovered by up to 40% before it is sent to landfill.
Ambati said AI operating systems offer “amazing return on investment” as long as plant operators know how to see and use the data.
Giving the example of aluminum drink cans, he said they are easily recyclable, but $5 billion worth of them still end up in landfills each year.
He said AI systems could not only recover significantly more aluminum in waste management plants, but also other materials such as plastics, reducing the need to produce new “virgin” materials. Stated.
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