Summary: Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, increase disease vulnerability, and economic loss. In this context, it is interesting that some researchers have taken artificial intelligence—a technology often considered an existential threat in its own right—and tried to turn it into a vehicle for climate action. This “climate AI” could be a game-changer in the tech ecosystem and has the potential to transform AI, challenging it to be more crisis-responsive and focused on addressing large-scale hazards. Many researchers and activists note that AI can indeed play a key role in prediction, mitigation, and adaptation in ways we can not afford to ignore. Because climate change affects each location differently, AI innovations have to rest on broad-based input and multinational datasets as an empirical foundation that motivates, validates, and diversifies. Thus, the challenge is to make AI more open and democratic so that it can produce an effective solution tailored for different regions and ecosystems.
Audience: This article may be interesting to Environmental Studies and Geology students, as well as people interested in AI, ML, and Data Science.