In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Priya Donti, cofounder and executive director of Climate Change AI, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. Donti discusses various types of artificial intelligence, the applications of artificial intelligence in the energy transition and climate policymaking, and the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in the ethical development and implementation of artificial intelligence.

References and recommendations:

“Putting the ‘smarts’ into the smart grid: a grand challenge for artificial intelligence” by Sarvapali D. Ramchurn, Perukrishnen Vytelingum, Alex Rogers, and Nicholas R. Jennings; https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2133806.2133825

“AI Is Essential for Solving the Climate Crisis” by Hamid Maher, Hubertus Meinecke, Damien Gromier, Mateo Garcia-Novelli, and Ruth Fortmann; https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/how-ai-can-help-climate-change

“Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning” by David Rolnick, Priya L. Donti, Lynn H. Kaack, Kelly Kochanski, Alexandre Lacoste, Kris Sankaran, Andrew Slavin Ross, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Natasha Jaques, Anna Waldman-Brown, Alexandra Sasha Luccioni, Tegan Maharaj, Evan D. Sherwin, S. Karthik Mukkavilli, Konrad P. Kording, Carla P. Gomes, Andrew Y. Ng, Demis Hassabis, John C. Platt, Felix Creutzig, Jennifer Chayes, Yoshua Bengio; https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3485128

“Climate Change and AI: Recommendations for Government Action” by Peter Clutton-Brock, David Rolnick, Priya L. Donti, Lynn H. Kaack, Tegan Maharaj, Alexandra (Sasha) Luccioni, Hari Prasanna Das; https://www.gpai.ai/projects/climate-change-and-ai.pdf

“Environmental justice in the age of big data: challenging toxic blind spots of voice, speed, and expertise” by Alice Mah; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2016.1220849