Machine Intelligence and the Environment
An Ethical Machines interview, with references
Published in
5 min readDec 23, 2015
I recently had the pleasure of speaking to samim and Roelof Pieters for their Ethical Machines podcast. The topic was machine intelligence and the environment, covering biodiversity conservation, climate change, clean energy, and related topics. Listen to the podcast embedded below.
A bunch of stats, tech, people, and companies are mentioned in this wide-ranging interview. For those interested in fact-checking or learning more, I’ve listed here some references covering most of what was discussed.
Sensory Ecology
- Sensory Ecology (Wikipedia)
- Prof. Dusenbury’s textbook: “Sensory Ecology: How Organisms Acquire and Respond to Information”
Neuromorphic Engineering
- Neuromorphic Engineering (Wikipedia)
- Carver Mead (Wikipedia)
- Memory and information processing in neuromorphic systems (IEEE Proceedings)
Auditory Neuroscience and Representation Learning
Please see my Google Scholar page for references. To highlight a few here:
- Sparse spectrotemporal coding of sounds (Neuromorphic Signal Proc.)
- The case for the missing pitch templates: How harmonic templates emerge in the early auditory system (J. Acoust. Soc. Am.)
- Rapid task-related plasticity of spectrotemporal receptive fields in primary auditory cortex (Nature Neuroscience)
- Robust spectrotemporal reverse correlation for the auditory system: Optimizing stimulus design (J. Comp. Neuroscience)
Ada: The Intelligent Space
The referenced “auditory AI” in Zürich was featured in Ada. Ada was an example of buildings as organisms, and was a large, heavily visited AI exhibit at the Swiss Expo in 2002.
- Details and Videos hosted at UPF Barcelona
- Design for a brain revisited: the neuromorphic design and functionality of the interactive space ’Ada’ (Reviews in the Neurosciences)
Audience, Inc.
- Technology is getting more human-like: Audience, Numenta and more (Venture Beat)
- Tiny Cellphone Chip Aims to Improve Sound Quality (New York Times)
- Commercializing Auditory Neuroscience (Allen Institute Symposium)
- Audience IPO shows strong reliance on Apple’s business (Seeking Alpha)
Conservation Metrics, Inc.
- Deep Learning for Large Scale Biodiversity Monitoring — Award-winning paper at Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange 2015
- Big Data is Saving this Little Bird (FiveThirtyEight Science)
- Eavesdropping on Seabirds (PLoS Ecology)
- Machine Intelligence in the Real World (Tech Crunch)
- How GPUs and Deep Learning Help Scientists Save Threatened Avian Populations (NVIDIA News)
Biodiversity in decline
- Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years, says WWF (The Guardian)
- The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection (Science)
- Global biodiversity: indicators of recent declines (Science)
- Human impact on the environment (Wikipedia)
Ecosystem Services
- Ecosystem Services (Wikipedia)
- Changes in the global value of ecosystem services (Global Environmental Change)
Conservation Technology
See wildlabs.net for one of several online repositories of knowledge about technology for conservation. A subset of topics include:
- eDNA — Environmental DNA — An emerging tool in conservation for monitoring past and present biodiversity (Biological Conservation)
- Acoustic Monitoring — A wireless acoustic sensor network for monitoring wildlife in remote locations (J. Acoust. Soc. Am.); Ecology and acoustics at a large scale (Ecol. Informatics special issue on Ecological Acoustics)
- Camera Monitoring — Monitoring the Status and Trends of Tropical Forest Terrestrial Vertebrate Communities from Camera Trap Data: A Tool for Conservation (PLoS One)
- Drones — See conservationdrones.org
- Radar — Reconstructing Velocities of Migrating Birds from Weather Radar (AI Magazine)
- Satellite — An overview of recent remote sensing and GIS based research in ecological informatics (Ecological Informatics)
Need for evidence-based conservation policy
- Moving beyond evidence-free environmental policy (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment)
- Adaptive management of biological systems: A review (Biological Conservation)
Improved weather forecasting increases clean power
- Taming wind power with better forecasts (IEEE Spectrum)
- Wind power, back-up power, and emissions (AWEA.org)
- 30% Jump In Solar Energy Forecasting Accuracy Gained By Machine Learning (Clean Technica)
- Chasing the sun: How solar forecasting could be the difference in the World Solar Challenge (Gizmag)
Climate Impact of Technology Advancements
Reinforcement learning objectives and challenges
Cyborg Ecosystems
- Brad Cantrell Landscape Architect, Harvard Graduate School of Design
- These synthetic landscapes respond to nature in real time to protect us and the planet (Fast Company)
- Humans and nature can co-exist in cyborg ecosystems (Nautilus)
Next-Gen Power Companies
- Google Energy (Wikipedia)
- Google is on the way to quietly becoming an electric utility (Quartz)
- Tesla CTO: Batteries + solar will lead to cheap electricity within 10 years (Forbes)
Citizen owned energy production
Geoengineering
Biotech and AI
- Flatley’s Law: The Company Speeding A Genetic Revolution (Forbes)
- The $1K Genome? So What? Illumina Is On a Quest for World Domination (Xconomy)
- Illumina Invests in CRISPR Platform Developer Desktop Genetics (GEN News)
- Deep Genomics launches, uniting deep learning and genome biology (Kurzweil AI)
- How Deep Genomics is using AI to solve genetic mysteries (Tech Insider)
- YC-Backed Atomwise discovers drugs for diseases that don’t even exist yet (Tech Crunch)
- Toronto startup has a faster way to discover effective medicines (The Globe and Mail)
- CRISPR, the gene-editing tech that’s making headlines, explained in one graphic (Business Insider)
- Three technologies that changed genetics (Nature Outlook)
- CRISPR, the disruptor (Nature News)
Also recommended
- Jeremy Rifkin: The zero marginal cost society
- Bret Victor: What can a technologist do about climate change?
Did I miss something? Please tell me.
