6 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help Save the Earth

Artificial Intelligence is being propelled out of research labs and into our everyday lives as big businesses are starting to realize its true value.

The power of Artificial Intelligence can be harnessed to help save the Earth through better stewardship of resources in many ways, including:

1. AI Guided Electric Vehicles
   AI-guided autonomous vehicles (AVs) can deliver mobility on-demand, and urban areas are expected to slowly transition over the coming years and decades. Greenhouse gas reductions can be achieved via route and traffic optimization, AI driven eco-driving algorithms, “platooned” traffic, and autonomous ride-sharing.
2. AI Predictions for Energy Grids
   AI can accurately pinpoint demand and supply for renewables, manage a distributed grid, improve efficiency and load management, reimagine storage, integrate renewables and enable dynamic pricing, and help incentivize the market.
3. Smart Cities
   AI can be utilized to simulate and automate various tasks at city government and planning levels. Auto generation of zoning laws, building ordinances and floodplains can be seamlessly integrated with GIS, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). Real-time data from across the entire city can help determine and optimize energy grids, water consumption and availability, flow of vehicle and foot traffic, and more in an “urban dashboard”.
4. Data Driven Food Chains
   AI-augmented agriculture brings automated data collection, decision-making and robot enabled corrective actions together. Crop diseases can be detected early, livestock provided with timed nutrition, plants delivered precise types and amounts of sunlight based on growing patterns, and agricultural inputs and returns optimized based on supply and demand.
5. Climate Prediction
   Artificial Intelligence makes “Climate Informatics” possible, completely changing the face of weather forecasting. Deep-learning networks take advantage of high performance energy-intensive computing, allowing complex scenarios to be run with hundreds of parameters to help lower the cost of research and accelerate new discoveries. AI techniques may also help correct biases in models, predict extreme events, and improve understanding of climate as a whole.
6. Disaster Response
   AI can analyze simulations and real-time data to seek out vulnerabilities and enhance disaster planning. Armed with data from weather trackers and social media, they can provide early warning and coordinate and priorities for emergency responses. Disaster simulations can be evaluated using deep learning to determine optimal response strategies.

Every one of these scenarios result in reduced emission, reduced pollution, more effective use of resources, higher conservation of resources, and other benefits which are crucial to saving the planet. AI can play an important part to a future that has a cleaner, healthier Earth, with long reaching effects lasting for generations to come.