Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Fantasy problem meet fantasy solution.
Here’s how AI can help fight climate change according to the field’s top thinkers
From monitoring deforestation to designing low-carbon materials
By James Vincent Jun 25, 2019, 8:02am EDTThe AI renaissance of recent years has led many to ask how this technology can help with one of the greatest threats facing humanity: climate change. A new research paperauthored by some of the field’s best-known thinkers aims to answer this question, giving a number of examples of how machine learning could help prevent human destruction.
The suggested use-cases are varied, ranging from using AI and satellite imagery to better monitor deforestation, to developing new materials that can replace steel and cement (the production of which accounts for nine percent of global green house gas emissions).
But despite this variety, the paper (which we spotted via MIT Technology Review) returns time and time again to a few broad areas of deployment. Prominent among these are using machine vision to monitor the environment; using data analysis to find inefficiencies in emission-heavy industries; and using AI to model complex systems, like Earth’s own climate, so we can better prepare for future changes.
The authors of the paper — which include DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Turing award winner Yoshua Bengio, and Google Brain co-founder Andrew Ng — say that AI could be “invaluable” in mitigating and preventing the worse effects of climate change, but note that it is not a “silver bullet” and that political action is desperately needed, too.
“Technology alone is not enough,” write the paper’s authors, who were led by David Rolnick, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. “[T]echnologies that would reduce climate change have been available for years, but have largely not been adopted at scale by society. While we hope that ML will be useful in reducing the costs associated with climate action, humanity also must decide to act.”
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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18744034/ai-artificial-intelligence-ml-climate-change-fight-tackle
The new paper is available here.
While I’m concerned that the potential of AI is being somewhat over hyped, there is no doubt AI could be a significant labor saving device for grant seeking climate scientists.
For example, below is my personal contribution to climate AI – a random climate psychology paper generator (press the button to see a new generated climate psychology paper) which I offer for free to the climate community.
What do you think? Would it pass peer review?
Update (EW): Stephen Skinner highlights an excellent reason why black box AI solutions are potential sources of extreme embarrassment for researchers.
When the AI machine starts spewing out Nobel awards to Al Gore and GSA awards to Mann for legal maneuvers you will have a clue. Will also be an awards category for other algorithms like Google in the fraternity of AI big brothers.
My comment disappeared into thin air. AI?
Patience is a virtue, or so they say.
Great idea. AI could also be used to help fight space aliens and also, the coming zombie invasion (you know it’s just a matter of time). And if flying pigs ever became a problem – presto, AI once again to the rescue!
The sky’s the limit.
1) We haven’t made any AI yet. We’ve got some clever scripts but “intelligence” means something, and it arguably means the capacity to reason generally, and the best we’ve got is a long way from that (obviously there are varying dictionary definitions).
2) One of the most sophisticated neural networks around is supposed to be YouTube’s recommendation system, and it’s awful. In my experience it’s wrong 99.5% of the time, often ridiculously wrong. A trained border collie would do an infinitely better job. I mean, they might also be over-hyping it and it’s just a 900-line batch file, who knows.
3) If the predictions don’t pan out, the hypothesis is still wrong, no matter how many lines of code you have.
Not an intelligence with a semblance of the degrees of freedom exhibited by even mediocre human beings. We have AI of the form of optimizing algorithms (e.g. neural networks), heuristic algorithms, and missing links filled with brown matter or “fudge factors” as we have come to expect in climate, political, and social sciences.
Slightly clever scripts. No intelligence in sight.
I mean, people have kind of standardized on “intelligence” meaning “literally anything that continues without a button press,” so it’s hard to blame people for using it, even though it’s been diluted to the point where it means almost nothing.
I just have a problem with a word meaning “almost any value on an entire spectrum.”
I question the use of the term “AI” when it comes to defining these analysis. True AI would come back saying the whole global warming is a hoax and humans are wasting their money. Their version of AI is nothing more than modeling. I contend no machine is capable of true AI. There are aspects of human reasoning that no machine can duplicate. It is the God factor- made in his image that can not be matched.
AI is very sensitive to inputs. If you just loaded it with the last 150 years of data, it would see CO2 levels rising and temperature rising and likely conclude that CO2 was driving temperature rise (or that temperature rise was driving CO2 rise).
If you told the AI that it was just as warm a thousand years ago the AI might produce more interesting conclusions. But plenty of human climate researchers manage to ignore the medieval warm period, so why would they give this information to their AI?
For the guys that have no clue yet what A.I beauty stands for.
In a mater and time of only one hour, an A.I does achieve to redo and replicate one of the most harder
Human experiment in physics, a Nobel price experiments, with no clue what so ever given of any connections either in subject of physics or otherwise as an initial condition.
A complete blind fold test of a replication… impossible in human terms to do.
Not only that, but the handling of the particulars in the term of that experiment were in a much much higher tuning,
and accuracy implementation by the A.I handling, than the humans that first produced such experiment in the first place.
Where no problem for the A.I to keep doing it in much better and more efficiently,
to a given proposition of the protocol to be considered as;
a utilizing of it successfully as a tool, not only as a replication, but a lot more, a utilization as a tool,
far beyond the human capacity and human skill to achieve, or even dream about, at that point.
All this was proved to be achieved in concept, principle and other wise, against any odds, in only one hour,
By an A.I…. not ever possible for humans, ever.
In one only hour, an A.I not only achieves a proper replication in a very complex and in a complete blind fold condition,
but shows clearly that it could even utilize it as a tool, beyond the experimentation point, in one of most difficult scientific experiments, a Nobel prize one in physics.
(This is not a joke, it is a very real thing, mind blowing yes, but still greatly underestimated.)
Please do stop underestimating the A.I,
it is going to be the path of our future, for the best or the worse, which ever way you want to look it.
A.Is, fully matured, do not make mistakes, we humanos do, a lot of shit mistakes.
Open your eyes, A.I is a real and a very potential “thing”, which we can not afford to underestimate, as we could miss a lot in meaning of time and gains in our life.
oh, ok…
cheers
In other IT news, Google is caught red-handed actively discriminating against individuals with conservative politics such as Jordan Peterson:
https://www.rt.com/usa/462679-google-shapiro-prager-peterson-nazis/
They display their political impartiality by employing the phrase “Na3i dog whistle” in connection with Jordan Peterson and others with similar views.
‘Google is caught red-handed actively’ and now we know why. It seems their AI has a problem with “fairness”
Google whistleblower bombshell: Search engine used social justice warriors to train its AI systems to suppress all conservative views’ Do you think “Climate Science AI” won’t be train to give the answer “Climate Scientist” are looking for?
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-06-24-google-whistleblower-bombshell-censorship-conservative.html
quote “The authors of the paper — which include DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Turing award winner Yoshua Bengio, and Google Brain co-founder Andrew Ng — say that AI could be “invaluable” in mitigating and preventing the worse effects of climate change…”
He’s just putting his hand up and saying “I want some money too, and I’ll even pretend to find more problems”.
Turn off the computers.
You’re welcome, please send my cheque to my Swiss bank account
Climate modelers do it with digital crytals balls
Guest essay by Eric Worrall –>
Climate modelers do it with digital – crystal – balls
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
“Technology alone is not enough,” write the paper’s authors, who were led by David Rolnick, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.
“[T]echnologies that would reduce climate change have been available for years, but have largely not been adopted at scale by society. While we hope that ML will be useful in reducing the costs associated with climate action, humanity also must decide to act.”
Didn’t anybody pass the good news to the University of Pennsylvania:
Nowadays there’s highly funded “super computers” for easy modelling climate scenarios – to restart till the result fits the mémé.