Earth alignment principle for AI
At a time when the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions precipitously, artificial intelligence (AI) brings large opportunities and large risks.
Bennett Institute’s Professor Felix Creutzig publishes new research work which proposes an “Earth alignment” principle to guide AI development and deployment towards planetary stability.
It has been routinely stated that artificial intelligence (AI), a disruptive technology, could be a powerful tool to accelerate innovation and scale climate action, protect biodiversity and reduce environmental degradation. However, there is a paradox at the heart of AI’s potential contribution to stewardship of Earth: AI is being deeply embedded in the existing global socio-economic system responsible for driving the destabilisation of the Earth system.
Good AI governance for planetary stewardship must focus both on the opportunities to mitigate Earth system risks and on reining in forces with the potential to accelerate destabilisation. The Earth alignment principle actively seeks to leverage AI’s capabilities to drive sustainability transformations across human activities while constraining developments that impede this goal.
The research outlines three criteria for strong Earth alignment that must be met over the entire life cycle of AI systems, their development, deployment and use.
- AI systems should help to accelerate the transition to sustainable production and consumption in ways that respect planetary boundaries, or at least do not obstruct these objectives (criterion 1).
- AI systems should be developed, deployed and used in ways that ensure equitable access to AI tools for global sustainability and avoid concentrations of power (criterion 2).
- AI systems should be developed, deployed and used to support greater societal cohesion, build trust and provide access to reliable information for planetary stewardship (criterion 3).
The goal of the principle is to guide innovation, use and deployment of AI. As such, it is relevant to three groups of actors: governments and international organizations, companies, and investors.
This article is a summary of a research paper:
Authors: Owen Gafney, Amy Luers, Franklin Carrero-Martinez, Berna Oztekin-Gunaydin, Felix Creutzig, Virginia Dignum, Victor Galaz, Naoko Ishii, Francesca Larosa, Maria Leptin & Ken Takahashi Guevara.
