Is planetary health without AI moribund?

A new report from the Stockholm Resilience Center doesn't go quite that far, but it does underline the importance—as well as the pitfalls—of using AI to accelerate sustainability science

Image: Stockholm Resilience Center report: AI for a Planet Under Pressure

A few days ago, the Stockholm Resilience Center released a new report titled “AI for a Planet Under Pressure.” It’s not the first report to explore the opportunities presented by AI to accelerate progress toward a healthy and sustainable future. But it might just be one of the most important to date.

And one thing it does well is highlighting the need for much deeper and broader conversations around the potentially pivotal roles of artificial intelligence in shaping the future of planetary systems, together with their intersection with human actions, lives, and aspirations.

The report sets out to address the question of whether applications of cutting edge AI can help “better understand and tackle the complex social, economic, and ecological repercussions of a changing planet.” Drawing on a substantial literature review and a long list of expert authors (as well as other contributors), it addresses eight major themes:

1. Preparing for a future of interconnected shocks (covering systemic approaches to preferred futures using AI);

2. Understanding a complex earth system (addressing enhanced approaches using AI to the planet as a complex and integrated system);

3. Stewarding our blue planet (focusing on ensuring sustainable ocean futures with AI);

4. Securing freshwater for all (exploring leveraging AI to ensure water security for people, ecosystems, and beyond);

5. Enhancing nature’s contributions to people (including using AI to address ecosystem health, biodiversity, and conservation futures) ;

6. Prospering on an urban planet (including building and maintaining sustainable urban environments with the help of AI);

7. Improving sustainability science communication (extending to fostering positive change through AI-enhanced approaches to communication and engagement); and

8. Collective decisions for a planet under pressure (capturing AI-aided informed decision-making on planetary health)

The report also includes a decent overview of different AI technologies and approaches that are relevant sustainability research, a useful summary of key insights, and key recommendations for various stakeholders—including researchers, the private sector, and public agencies.

The report doesn’t go as far as I would have liked to see in terms of how we need to take even more inclusive and integrated approaches to AI, society, and the future (for instance, the framework I described several months ago around AI and where we live, what we do, and who we are reflects a deeper level of interconnectedness than the SRC report). But it does nevertheless present a strong vision of where AI can enhance and accelerate research, practice and decision-making around planetary health writ large.

It also does’t shy away from discussing the limitations of AI in this context—including environmental impacts and the dangers of data misinterpretation, misleading (yet authoritative) insights, and outright misinformation. Yet the overarching thrust of the analysis is that AI is poised to be a game changer in addressing planet-wide sustainability and resiliency challenges that have so far eluded us.

To quote the executive summary:

“[W]e show that: (1) AI offers vast potential to accelerate progress across the sustainability sciences. (2) AI can sharpen our decision-making and clarify complex environmental challenges for researchers and the public alike. (3) However, realizing this promise requires careful navigation of the risks, including AI’s own environmental footprint, inherent biases, and the challenge of unequal access. (4) Despite these hurdles, responsible and ethical applications of AI in sustainability research are not just a possibility—they are an urgent necessity. (5) Pioneering these uses can unlock the breakthroughs we need to build a more sustainable future.”

The report admittedly stops short of answering my rather provocative opening question of whether planetary health is moribund without AI. But the tacit implication is that planetary health might be severely compromised if AI isn’t integral to efforts going forward.

And here, the report leaves a question hanging in the air: If AI—even with it’s current limitations—has the potential to catalyze and accelerate progress toward a more healthy and sustainable global relationship between people and planet, and in ways that have so far defied our non-augmented human intellect and intelligence, can we build a healthy, sustainable future without it?

The report makes a good case for the importance of leaning into AI here. But answers to the question continue to be far from certain. For instance, there are arguments that suggest that the emerging relationship between AI, humans, and planetary health is so complex, and convoluted, that it would be foolish to assume that embracing AI is the only way to a sustainable future.

Concerns here include the possibilities that emerging AI systems will not deliver on their promise; the potential of a global crash in the AI market—with knock-on consequences to AI-dependent initiatives; deep uncertainties around the robustness of AI-driven knowledge generation; the reliability of AI-based and AI-suggested solutions; and the increasingly complex relationship between people and AI; and all of the messiness that this entails.

These are aspects of AI and future planetary health that the report only touches on briefly, or not at all in some cases. Yet moving forward, they need to be part of a broader set of conversations around how AI impacts pathways to the type of futures we collectively aspire to.

The good news is that this new report does open up vital conversations around AI and sustainable futures in important ways. And even if it doesn’t go as far as I think is needed, this is at least a strong step in the right direction.

Because wherever AI takes us, I’m pretty sure that planetary health without conversations about AI—and conversations that lead to action—really does risk becoming moribund.