Encode Artificial Intelligence into Sustainability

Posted by: YijunW

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already more real than people realize. A whopping 70 percent of the companies surveyed this year by Forrester Research plan to use some form of AI by the end of 2018 (Forbes). AI research is a priority for many tech giants: Alphabet (through DeepMind and Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are investing millions of dollars into it. Market researcher IDC predicts global spending related to this technology at $46 billion by 2020, compared with an estimated $12.5 billion in 2017 (Greenbiz). You are already an everyday AI user, even though you might not realize it. Think about your personal assistant in your smartphone: Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, or Google assistant. The AI built into your electronics is programmed to learn about your behaviors and habits and the nuances of your personal speech patterns. The fraud alerts texts from your banks or shopping advertisements from e-commerce sites are made possibly by software which is trained to observe your activity and make predictions behind the scenes based on information it gathers about your behavior. Set aside for a moment, there are concerns about the rapid development which AI is advancing. Concerns about job losses and the unknown question of who will make sure AI is used in an ethical manner (IEEE) continue. Still, it is clear that the transformative potential of this technology for the sustainability movement is unlimited (Greenbiz). UN has an even hopeful position about AI. On a 2017 UN sustainable development, a humanoid robot Sophia answered UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed's question about what the UN can do to help people in many parts of the world who have no access to the Internet or electricity, “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed […] If we are smarter and focused on win-win type of results, A.I. [artificial intelligence] could help proficiently distribute the world’s existing resources like food and energy (UN).” In the near future, AI will play an essential role in empowering and scaling sustainability solutions that today we only can dream about because the task of analyzing the data manually is too redundant and complicated. We are talking about an AI system that can create complex systems that detect sources of environmental pollution quickly and precisely or elements that can surface potential issues across sensitive natural ecosystems. AI software grouped with radar, ultrasound, cameras, LiDAR and other sensors, allowing analytics to be accurate for the success of self-driving vehicles: Uber, Tesla, GM, Ford, Volkswagen Group, and BMW are the companies that are leading in autonomous vehicle creation (Navigant). Machine learning is already widely used for Optical character recognition, which are applications that recognize speech and images, so it’s easy to envision how it could play a role in classifying endangered species and modeling how planetary ecosystems might react to catastrophic changes in the climate. EarthCube, for instance, is essentially a three-dimensional, digital representation of Earth’s ecosystems. By changing the inputs, researchers more easily can simulate the effects of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Projects in China, with 600 cities declaring intentions to invest in “smart” technology, including the country’s eastern capital of Hangzhou. The “City Brain” project initiated by Alibaba and Foxconn collects numerous amounts of data about the city’s more than 9 million residents by letting artificial intelligence process data to improve urban traffic flows. The improvements were noticeable, according to NewScientist. IBM’s Green Horizons initiative focuses on air quality management, grid integration for solar and wind resources, and energy optimization in China (IBM). Microsoft’s AI for Earth initiative allocates $2 million in funds and tech to support to organizations apply machine learning to water conservation, agriculture, biodiversity and climate change. Don't be surprised when AI becomes parts of your life. It might happen in 10 years or sooner. To learn more, please visit: Greenbiz https://bit.ly/2OvHQER Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2017/11/09/10-predictions-for-ai-big-data-and-analytics-in-2018/#747e2949403c IEEE https://standards.ieee.org/develop/indconn/ec/autonomous_systems.html UN https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/10/568292-un-robot-sophia-joins-meeting-artificial-intelligence-and-sustainable#.Wlfe01Q-dTZ Navigant https://www.zdnet.com/article/dossier-the-leaders-in-self-driving-cars/ Earthcube https://earthcube.org/info/about NewScientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/2151297-a-smart-city-in-china-tracks-every-citizen-and-yours-could-too/ IBM http://research.ibm.com/labs/china/greenhorizon.html