Best of: Searching for climate solutions amid the AI hype

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Depending on who you ask, AI is either going to save the world or end it. The technology’s capacity for data-crunching and problem-saving can help predict weather events, making it easier to optimize power grids, prepare for natural disasters, and maximize crop output. But artificial intelligence is also energy intensive – and easy to apply to ethically questionable ends. For all of these reasons, Priya Donti, professor of electrical engineering and AI at MIT, decided to found Climate Change AI, a group dedicated to applying AI to tackle climate problems.

In this episode, which first ran in May of 2024, Donti tells Akshat Rathi about some of the projects the group is funding around the world, and what the democratization of AI would look like in practice.

Explore further:

Past episode about Microsoft’s rising AI emissions, and President Brad Smith’s claim that the AI will do more good than harm
Past episode with African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina about climate innovation projects across the African continent
Past episode with climate scientist and champion for developing countries Saleemul Huq

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. This episode was produced by Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.
0:05.8	Someone was posting photos.
0:08.1	It was just me naked.
0:09.5	Well, not me, but me with someone else's body part.
0:13.2	This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Colliderscope,
0:18.2	about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it.
0:22.1	Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:30.0	Hi, it's Akshad. This week, we are replaying a conversation I had with Priya Donte of MIT about the role AI can play in tackling climate change.
0:40.0	No one is more knowledgeable or realistic about this area than Priya.
0:45.3	And no one is doing more to ensure that AI's climate applications are steered responsibly.
0:51.2	Enjoy the episode.
0:53.0	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, what good can AI do?
0:58.4	Remember when data was the new oil?
1:13.6	I'm specifically thinking of a 2017 cover of The Economist showing Google, Amazon and other tech giants as big offshore oil rigs.
1:21.6	The idea being that data was a new critical resource and it was going to reshape the world.
1:30.1	In some ways, that has already happened.
1:33.6	Maybe this podcast was suggested to you by Spotify or Apple based on your listening history,
1:39.1	just a small example of big data at work.
1:43.1	Artificial intelligence, the latest buzzword, of course thrives on data.
1:48.0	That devouring of data is energy and resource intensive.
1:52.0	It's something we discussed in last week's episode with Microsoft President Brad Smith.
1:57.0	The company wants to be carbon negative, but is instead seeing its emissions grow.
	...

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