During his research stay in Australia Senior Scientist Peter Biegelbauer was invited to speak at the Joint Monash University Sustainable Development Institute on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the twin digitalization and sustainability transition.
AI is an equally pathbreaking and promising technology impacting our societies rapidly regarding how we communicate with friends, find partners, do business, and make voting decisions, to name just a few examples. It comes also with some challenges, as for example opaque procedures - AI models are often described as “black boxes” - and an increasing resource consumption, e.g., by ChatGPT.
Peter Biegelbauer discussed two ways to reap the benefits of the technology and minimize potential negative consequences. The first rests on ethics-based procedures supporting the development of AI, the second on the development of regulations, such as the European Union’s recent AI Act and activities of, for instance, the US and China, but also the OECD and UNESCO.
The presentation was followed by lively debates on these two options, but also the possible contribution of AI to climate change versus solving the climate crisis as well as policy innovations contributing to harnessing digitalization and sustainability.