Cowls Josh, Tsamados Andreas, Taddeo Mariarosaria, Floridi Luciano
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 1 St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3JS UK.
Alan Turing Institute, British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London, NW1 2DB UK.
AI Soc. 2023;38(1):283-307. doi: 10.1007/s00146-021-01294-x. Epub 2021 Oct 18.
In this article, we analyse the role that artificial intelligence (AI) could play, and is playing, to combat global climate change. We identify two crucial opportunities that AI offers in this domain: it can help improve and expand current understanding of climate change, and it can contribute to combatting the climate crisis effectively. However, the development of AI also raises two sets of problems when considering climate change: the possible exacerbation of social and ethical challenges already associated with AI, and the contribution to climate change of the greenhouse gases emitted by training data and computation-intensive AI systems. We assess the carbon footprint of AI research, and the factors that influence AI's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in this domain. We find that the carbon footprint of AI research may be significant and highlight the need for more evidence concerning the trade-off between the GHG emissions generated by AI research and the energy and resource efficiency gains that AI can offer. In light of our analysis, we argue that leveraging the opportunities offered by AI for global climate change whilst limiting its risks is a gambit which requires responsive, evidence-based, and effective governance to become a winning strategy. We conclude by identifying the European Union as being especially well-placed to play a leading role in this policy response and provide 13 recommendations that are designed to identify and harness the opportunities of AI for combatting climate change, while reducing its impact on the environment.
在本文中，我们分析了人工智能（AI）在应对全球气候变化方面可能发挥以及正在发挥的作用。我们确定了人工智能在这一领域提供的两个关键机遇：它有助于改进和扩展当前对气候变化的认识，并且能够为有效应对气候危机做出贡献。然而，在考虑气候变化时，人工智能的发展也引发了两组问题：与人工智能相关的社会和伦理挑战可能会加剧，以及训练数据和计算密集型人工智能系统排放的温室气体对气候变化的影响。我们评估了人工智能研究的碳足迹，以及影响该领域人工智能温室气体（GHG）排放的因素。我们发现人工智能研究的碳足迹可能很大，并强调需要更多证据来证明人工智能研究产生的温室气体排放与人工智能所能带来的能源和资源效率提升之间的权衡。基于我们的分析，我们认为利用人工智能为全球气候变化带来的机遇同时限制其风险是一种策略，这需要以证据为基础的、有效的应对式治理才能成为成功战略。我们在结论中指出，欧盟在这一政策应对中处于特别有利的地位，能够发挥主导作用，并提供了13条建议，旨在识别和利用人工智能应对气候变化的机遇，同时减少其对环境的影响。
