Can AI help solve the climate crisis?

The Green Alliance Podcast

Green Alliance

Environment, Uk, Farming, Green Alliance, News, Sustainability, Society & Culture, Government

4.9 • 34 Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

AI is evolving at unprecedented speed and regulation is struggling to keep up. What does this mean for the future of democracy, UK climate goals and wider environmental ambitions? In this episode of the Green Alliance Podcast, Shaun Spiers, executive director at Green Alliance, speaks with Professor Gina Neff, executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy and professor of responsible AI at Queen Mary University of London. They explore the risks of unchecked big tech and the environmental costs of its rapid expansion: from energy-hungry data centres to the urgent need for transparency and accountability.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We're the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.
0:07.0	I'm Sean Spears, Executive Director of Green Alliance. I'm here today for an in conversation with Professor Gina Neff,
0:14.0	Executive Director of the Mindrew Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge,
0:19.0	and Professor of Responsible
0:21.4	AI at Queen Mary University.
0:24.1	We're just talking about how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world around us.
0:28.5	We'll look at what AI could mean for the UK's economy and global influence, the risks
0:32.5	it poses, particularly for democracy, and above all what it means for the environment, particularly climate action, both good and bad.
0:40.7	So, Gina, there's a huge amount of attention on AI at the moment, and particularly AI as a kind of growth strategy,
0:48.1	the idea that there's a race on that the UK can win it and that this is the key to economic growth, that economic growth
0:56.5	has generally come through technical innovation and this is the next industrial revolution for us.
1:03.7	You're a bit skeptical about this, I understand. I read you saying that AI is sprinkled like
1:08.5	fairy dust over economic problems. Tell us where that
1:12.3	skepticism comes from. Well, let's start with the people on the other side. There are some really
1:17.7	great arguments around being able to use AI to unlock enormous opportunity, particularly
1:25.2	in this country. So it's not a surprise to anybody who keeps up with the
1:31.3	news that the UK has a productivity crisis. And the hope is that AI can be one of the levers
1:38.3	that we use to get ourselves out of that. Recent economic analysis really ranges what that productivity growth from AI
1:48.1	could look like, something like 3% a year to one of the most recent Nobel Prize laureates.
1:56.5	Ashimurlou suggests that it's less than 1% a year growth, productivity growth from AI.
2:04.0	So there are professional skeptics out there in the dismal sciences.
2:09.6	Anthropic, from a recent report that they have released suggests that they're based on their own usage patterns and
	...

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