Sustainability

AI has major impacts on both ecological and social sustainability, notably negatively through the massive infrastructure and energy use of currently popular LLM-based models, as well as the concrete social effects of LLM-generated content and chatbot-driven changes in social dynamics. There are, however, also potential positive uses of AI, e.g. in terms of improved modelling of supply chains and finding new efficiencies in industries and institutions, and in studying and theorising around the concrete effects of social and climate change and how to balance different interests and avoiding important boundaries – including through direct collaboration with local communities to understand their needs and co-develop solutions that genuinely serve them.