AI & Climate Action: Get Serious

The Human Intelligence-Artificial Intelligence-Climate Action Nexus

This is a continuation of our AI & Climate discussion, begun with our earlier post discussing various pitfalls to the AI & Climate Action relationship.

Bottom Line Up Front

To overcome climate change we need speed and scale of transformation the likes of which the world has never seen. AI, properly and safely utilized, can help. While we don’t need it and mustn’t wait for it to get going in a big way, with AI we can make our future come faster and help ensure we create speed and scale in time.

But speed and scale must also create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything, and we must ensure that AI helps bring this about as we overcome climate change.

Combining Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence to Turbocharge Strategic ARTC

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, ARTC, the accelerating rate of tech change, part of The Catalytic-4 as our Third Catalytic Source of Transformation, is powered by the continual production of useful knowledge generated by the ARTC-combo: (1) specialization; (2) nonrivalry of knowledge, i.e., its endlessly copyable and useable nature, and; (3) market competition. All of this is responsible for 85-90% of economic growth, which provides the resources for more people to participate in the ARTC-combo via their particular forms of specialization.

Underlying all of this is the human brain and human intelligence. The more brains we have working and collaborating on it, and the more people communicating about it, the more chances we have to increase the production of useful knowledge leading to inventions and innovations that keep ARTC and prosperity humming along.

So now we have the possibility of supplementing human intelligence with various kinds of artificial intelligence, including machine-learning, agentic-AI, and artificial general intelligence or AGI. These can help us turbocharge strategic climate action.

What is machine learning?

Let’s let IBM explain it:

Machine learning is the subset of artificial intelligence (AI) focused on algorithms that can “learn” the patterns of training data and, subsequently, make accurate inferences about new data. This pattern recognition ability enables machine learning models to make decisions or predictions without explicit, hard-coded instructions.

Even if all we did was take advantage of this basic form of machine learning it could be a tremendous help for climate action.

What is agentic-AI?

Again, IBM:

Agentic AI is an artificial intelligence system that can accomplish a specific goal with limited supervision. It consists of AI agents—machine learning models that mimic human decision-making to solve problems in real time. In a multiagent system, each agent performs a specific subtask required to reach the goal and their efforts are coordinated through AI orchestration.

Unlike traditional AI models, which operate within predefined constraints and require human intervention, agentic AI exhibits autonomy, goal-driven behavior and adaptability. The term “agentic” refers to these models’ agency, or, their capacity to act independently and purposefully.

So agentic-AI is a more advanced form of machine learning that is autonomous, proactive, specialized, and adaptable.

Agentic-AI can really help us speed things up even more, help us make our future come faster.

What is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)?

Ok, so what is AGI? Once again, IBM:

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a hypothetical stage in the development of machine learning (ML) in which an artificial intelligence (AI) system can match or exceed the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task.

One crucial aspect needs to be added. AGI is “unaided,” meaning it can go about its business without any help from humans.

AGI doesn’t exist yet. But it will within our climate action timeframe, which extends throughout the remainder of this Century. We must take advantage, with proper safeguards, of each step along the way to AGI and apply such advances to climate action as they become available.

Again, to be crystal clear, all of this presupposes everything is being done safely. Safety first. And, as discussed in my earlier post, AI data centers must be powered by their own clean power and cooled in ways that don’t harm local water supply.

Not Just Clean Tech

One thing we must not do is have our thinking about how AI can help captured in a clean tech silo, as if that’s the only way we can overcome climate change.

First, broadly, we must support government R&D in basic science to help ensure that new possibilities don’t run dry. We can’t predict unpredictable scientific advances. We must work to find them.

But we must not just support basic R&D spending as we’ve done in the past, we also must push for the use of AI in advancing basic science.

Second, anything that uses energy must be improved so it uses less or even creates its own.

But efficiency doesn’t necessarily equate to significant pollution reductions and less environmental impacts. That’s because any efficiency gains can be offset by what’s called the rebound effect. This can happen when people use more of something because efficiency gains have made it cheaper, given that it takes less energy and/or less stuff to achieve the same result.

What we must do is drive efficiency to a point where it completely overwhelms the rebound effect. Even more, we should strive to have the amount of energy and stuff needed to create prosperous sustainability for everyone be 10% or less than what we use today.

AI can make a major contribution by helping drive the needed invention and innovation across just about the entire spectrum of processes and products our economies produce, as well as improving ways our societies function (e.g. traffic and travel patterns).

Finally, AI can help us better manage our relationship with the rest of nature, including natural climate solutions and helping to create balance and harmony between human civilization and nature as prosperous sustainability requires.

What’s Happening? Nowhere To Go But Up

Let me start with this caveat: for all I know there could be many efforts going on with the human intelligence-AI-climate action nexus that aren’t being written about and shared publicly (including in China).

Be that as it may, from what I’ve learned so far there are some valiant efforts by volunteers that are absolutely needed, and the specifics will be covered in our next post.

But my overall response to what I’ve been able to discover is this: are you frikkin’ kidding me.

It’s absolutely great that we have folks volunteering. Volunteers are the only way The Climate Movement will become big and broad and active enough. And I’m so grateful folks have created this particular climate/AI Field of Action where their gifts, abilities, knowledge, and experience can be brought to bear together in overcoming climate change.

And I’m also grateful to well meaning philanthropists providing funds for small research grants.

Lots of needed learning can take place.

A standing ovation to all participating in these efforts! Thank you! You are helping lay a foundation that the rest of us must build upon.

But from the perspective of society’s response to climate change, this is woefully inadequate. These valiant volunteers and supporting philanthropists can’t create the speed and scale needed in this particular Field of Action.

Businesses also have an important role to play. They may be footing much of the bill for advances in machine learning, agentic-AI, and AGI. That’s because they see profits in their future.

But we can’t expect those in a market system where profits rule the roost to do anything other than seek those profits. If they are going to help with this particular climate action partnership between human intelligence and artificial intelligence they must get paid or achieve some other form of compensation or consideration.

Governments exist to create and/or facilitate the Common Good. Businesses may indirectly create some Common Good as they seek profits (the old Invisible Hand). Volunteers are crucial to the Common Good, as is the case with The Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters. But much of our job is to push governments to do their job, including structuring markets to create the Common Good that volunteers and the Invisible Hand cannot.

Governments must lead for this partnership between human intelligence and artificial intelligence to fulfill its potential in overcoming climate change. They should be funding this work in a major way. And, again, The Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters should push and support politicians to do so.

Some of us in The Climate Movement — elected and appointed officials, their staffs, relevant businesses and NGOs, etc — need to propose and enact legislation; this is one of your Fields of Action. And the rest of us need to support them. This should happen at both the state and federal levels in the US and in countries all over the world.

Finally, nations should create collaborations to further speed up and enhance these capabilities.

When it comes to the human-intelligence-artificial-intelligence-climate-action nexus, it’s time for societies to get serious, and for them to find ways to work together. The Climate Movement must lead the way in creating the popular support necessary. Join us!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.