Searching for climate solutions amid the AI hype
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2024
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ 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.
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. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Anna Mazarakis and Alicia Clanton. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 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 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. |
| 0:03.0 | This week, what good can AI do? |
| 0:06.0 | Remember when data was the new oil? |
| 0:20.0 | I'm specifically thinking of a 2017 cover of The Economist, |
| 0:24.4 | showing Google, Amazon, and other tech giants as big offshore oil rigs. |
| 0:29.6 | The idea being that data was a new critical resource, |
| 0:33.4 | and it was going to reshape the world. |
| 0:37.4 | In some ways, that has already happened. |
| 0:40.8 | Maybe this podcast was suggested to you by Spotify or Apple based on your listening history, |
| 0:46.3 | just a small example of big data at work. |
| 0:50.3 | Artificial intelligence, the latest buzzword, of course, thrives on data. |
| 0:55.6 | That devouring of data is energy and resource intensive. |
| 0:59.5 | It's something we discussed in last week's episode with Microsoft President Brad Smith. |
| 1:04.3 | The company wants to be carbon negative, but is instead seeing its emissions grow. |
| 1:10.7 | But of course, fed the right data, AI can do amazing things. but is instead seeing its emissions grow. |
| 1:15.1 | But of course, fed the right data, AI can do amazing things, |
| 1:17.5 | even help tackle climate change. |
| 1:19.4 | But how exactly? |
| 1:23.8 | If there's one person taking the lead on that question, |
| 1:25.8 | it's MIT's Priya Dante. |
| 1:29.7 | She's a professor of electrical engineering and AI and the co-founder of climate change AI, an organization bringing together academics and industry leaders |
| 1:35.4 | interested in how AI can be used for climate solutions. Her group funds independent projects |
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