AI and the Planet in Crisis – Climate, Sustainability, and Global Governance

University of Vienna, 23 – 24 September 2024

Organization: Mark Coeckelbergh, Leonie Bossert, Leonie Möck

Keynote Speakers:

Aimee van Wynsberghe, University of Bonn
Benedetta Brevini, University of Sydney
Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs Austria
Daniel Kammen, University of California, Berkeley
Lidia Brito, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences UNESCO
Payal Arora, University of Utrecht
Rupert Read, Director of the Climate Majority Project

Humanity is facing pressing socio-ecological crises such as biodiversity loss, pandemics, and climate change. All these crises have a planetary dimension, as they have global and intergenerational consequences. Technologies can play a major role in mitigating or exacerbating these crises, especially artificial intelligence (AI) with its ever-increasing impact around the world, making it one of the leading technologies of the Anthropocene. AI can contribute to climate change due to its huge consumption of energy and water, as well as high CO2 emissions. But it can also mitigate climate change with gathering and processing data on temperature change and CO2 emissions, transforming mobility systems to emit less, managing energy consumption, or nudging people toward more climate-friendly behavior.

The link between AI and climate change is attracting increasing attention within academia, politics, and the media. However, the question of how AI should be developed and applied to mitigate rather than fuel climate change remains underexplored. We believe that it is critically important to examine the ways in which AI relates to climate change, to discuss how to best govern AI and climate change at the global level, and to imagine how to create both local and planetary transformations towards more sustainable and democratic futures.  

With this conference, we aim at gathering scholars from around the world to discuss these open research and policy questions, to work towards solutions on how to develop and use AI in a sustainable, climate-friendly way without violating basic democratic principles, and to develop a vision for a new global governance framework.

Under the patronage of