Can AI help solve the climate crisis? | Sims Witherspoon

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"AI can be a transformational tool in our fight against climate change," says Sims Witherspoon, a leader at the AI research lab Google DeepMind. Using wind power as her case study, she explains how powerful neural networks can help us better predict Earth's changing ecosystems and accelerate the breakthrough science needed to create a carbon-free energy supply.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective
0:10.8	I'm Elise Hugh, it's Ted Talks Daily.
0:13.1	AI is a topic full of tensions these days and lots of questions.
0:19.6	But AI climate scientist Sims Witherspoon believes it can be a transformational tool in
0:24.9	the fight against climate change.
0:27.1	In her talk from the Ted Countdown Summit in 2023, she lays out why it's coming up after
0:32.6	her short break.
0:36.2	You may have had the experience of unboxing furniture and come across instructions that
0:41.2	go something like this.
0:43.3	A symbol of the bookshelf according to the provided diagram.
0:47.1	Yes, I know what a bookshelf looks like.
0:50.3	Probably wouldn't be reading the assembly instructions if I didn't need a little more
0:53.8	help with the process.
0:56.1	Or maybe you've opened a cookbook with an author who thinks you're already somewhat
0:59.6	of a chef.
1:01.0	Deglies the pan.
1:03.2	What?
1:04.2	Okay.
1:06.0	Off I go on a separate search to understand whatever that means.
1:10.6	Instructions that tell you what to do and not how to do it are pretty useless.
1:16.9	And yet even when we're talking about something as important as climate change, we hear them
1:22.0	all the time.
	...

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