Page 39 - Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Figure 7: Goals of the 2019 AI for Good Global Summit [vii]

AI provides unprecedented opportunities to eradicate hunger, end poverty and reverse the
degradation of our natural environment. The AI for Good series aims to inspire innovation
by highlighting the extraordinary possibilities soon to be within reach thanks to AI, and to
ensure that AI accelerates progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). The United Nations could convene all AI stakeholders in an impartial debate.
Only with strong dialogue and partnership among governments, international organizations,
the private sector and academia will AI fulfill its great potential to act as a force for good.

Discussion on the UN platform will build a common understanding of the capabilities of
emerging AI technologies. This will create cohesion in policy approaches to AI and encourage
the international community to rally around applications of AI with the potential to address
the greatest challenges facing humanity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably one of the most important and rapidly developing new technologies
to emerge in past decades. While the world is only just beginning to grasp all its possibilities, AI is
already a big part of people’s everyday lives and can also help address some of the world’s most
pressing challenges, including that of climate change.
AI and machine-learning algorithms will increasingly help to mitigate and manage climate change-
related risk in the future, including catastrophic weather events such as tornadoes, hurricanes and
thunderstorms, by improving the accuracy of global climate models and climate forecasts. Clouds are
the single biggest source of uncertainty in global climate models. New studies suggest that AI and
artificial neural networks can successfully resolve more complicated and smaller-scale atmospheric
processes like the ones involved in convective cloud formation and, thus, reduce the uncertainties
inherent to current climate models. 101

UN Environment has identified six major categories where artificial intelligence can contribute to
climate action (as seen in Figure 8).

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