Sustainable AI: Narratives and Impacts

Can AI really help save the planet—or is it just another resource-hungry illusion? Join us as we explore the promises, pitfalls, and real-world impacts of "sustainable AI." Together with Paris Marx and Paul Schütze, we’ll question the dominant narratives and uncover whether this revolutionary technology can truly drive ecological transformation, or if it merely reinforces the status quo. Be part of the critical conversation shaping our digital and sustainable future.

In the light of ambitions to shape sustainable societies, where the needs of all present human beings as well as future generations are met within the planetary ecological boundaries, promising approaches and solutions are desperately needed. The search especially includes the use of digital tools like artificial intelligence (AI), which is currently considered a “game-changer” and “revolutionary” technology in the fight against climate change by policy-makers, technologists and international organizations alike.

At the same time countless new AI data centers are built around the globe increasingly consuming electricity, water, space and other scarce resources. Since the promises of sustainable AI largely rely on narratives of efficiency and progress we want to shed light on those narratives as well as the actual suitability and practical impacts of such approaches. We want to discuss, if and how sustainable AI can be a leap forward in the sustainability project or if it is rather the technical solution to the climate crisis from a techno-solutionist vantage point simply reproducing the status quo.

In two talks and a panel we want to investigate the promised and actual impacts of sustainable AI as well as the ideological foundations behind an impactful emerging academic, political and economic topic.

Schedule

4pm: Introduction, Nicolas Zehner (WI)
4:05pm - 4:40pm: Input from Paul Schütze, Osnabrück University, Germany
4:40pm - 5:20pm: Input from Paris Marx, journalist and host of the "Tech Won't Save Us" podcast, Canada
5:20pm - 6pm: Panel with Paris Marx, Paul Schütze, Jana Pannier (WI) & Rainer Rehak (WI)
6pm: informal get-together

Please register here for free.

The organisers

The event is organised by the Weizenbaum Institute’s research project "Towards Informational Sustainability: Grasping the Co-Productionist Nature of Digitalization and Sustainability", which explores how digitalization and sustainability are connected. Shedding light on the socio-material infrastructures that sustain digital societies, the concept of informational sustainability places a focus on the long-term public value of automation technologies like AI by shifting the discussion from questions of intelligence to questions of usefulness. It problematizes existing digital information and knowledge infrastructures, advocates individual and collective informational self-determination, and interrogates the conditions that allow certain shapes of digital infrastructures to become stabilized. Rethinking of how we design, maintain, and repair information systems and digital knowledge infrastructures, the project aims to encourage discussions in both academic and public spheres.

More information on the project can be found on the project website.

Further Information

Marx, Paris (2024, July 5). Generative AI is a climate disaster – Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share. Disconnect.
Raworth, Kate (2012). A safe and just space for humanity: Can we live within the doughnut? (Oxfam Discussion Papers) [Discussion paper]. Oxfam.
Rehak, Rainer (2024) On the (im)possibility of sustainable artificial intelligence. In: Züger, T. & Asghari, H. (2024) AI systems for the public interest. Internet Policy Review, 13(3).
Schütze, Paul (2024). The Problem of Sustainable AI: A Critical Assessment of an Emerging Phenomenon. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 4(1).
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-OHCHR). (2024, June 14). Artificial intelligence: A game-changer for sustainable development.