Silicon Valley leaders tell us that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will bring untold benefits. They say it is already underway and accelerating, powered by artificial intelligence and other technologies, and warn that we will be left eating dust if we don't get with the programme.
This is a general-purpose revolution. Its leaders and their boosters promise that it will help societies to tackle climate change, address poverty and inequality, and stem the dramatic loss of biodiversity. The revolution might play out like that. Or it might not.
Consider the most recent digital revolution, which brought us Google, Facebook and Twitter, and changed the way information flows around the world. At first, the ability to connect to others online, and to create and share digital content seamlessly through ever-growing virtual social networks, seemed straightforwardly beneficial.
But today, the global flood of misinformation enabled by these platforms is making it more difficult to manage the Covid-19 pandemic and tackle climate change. Few realised what was happening until it was too late and now we are dealing with the fallout.
So, how can societies minimise the risk of inadvertent, ignorant, or willfully malicious use of the next generation of technology?
My work has increasingly focused on the collision of two worlds. The technosphere comprises the stuff that humans have created, which amounts to an estimated 30 trillion tonnes, or 50 kilogrammes per square metre of the Earth's surface. The biosphere is the thin layer clinging to the Earth's surface where life thrives, and where humans have enjoyed a 10,000-year stretch of relatively stable climate. I first became interested in the relationship between these worlds while exploring the growth of semi-automated global early-warning systems for disease control. This made me appreciate how deeply technology alters human, organisational and machine behaviour.
Sometimes that influence is linear but more often than not, the effects of technological change are indirect; they move through complex webs of causation and become visible to us only after a long time. Social media are a good example of this.
The technosphere is all around us. It is on track to become so-called "cognitive infrastructure", with the ability to process information, reason, remember, learn, solve problems and even make decisions with minimal human intervention through increased automation and machine learning.
In evolutionary terms, this may prove to be a giant leap but decisions regarding the technosphere's design and direction must reflect social goals and the state of the planet. Building a more sustainable future therefore requires us to rethink some deeply-held assumptions about the role of technology, and artificial intelligence in particular.
The biggest imperative may be to broaden the dominant "AI for climate change" narrative. Developing and deploying AI responsibly to tackle urgent sustainability challenges requires embracing this connection with the living planet, and our role in it.
Moreover, framing AI's contribution in terms of optimisation and efficiency is the wrong way to think about bolstering the long-term resilience of people and the planet. Resilience -- the ability to rebound from shocks and adapt to changing conditions -- requires diversity and redundancy.
Systems that are optimised to maximize output (say, of a particular crop) are prone to shocks and changing circumstances.
Optimising agricultural land for maximum yields using predictive analytics and automation is tempting but it could accelerate loss of local ecological knowledge, amplify existing inequalities and increase reliance on monoculture in response to commercial pressures.
AI's potential lies in augmenting people's capacities to become stewards of the biosphere but directing intelligent machines to foster biosphere stewardship is risky.
The first is hype. As the pressures on our planet and the climate system increase, so will the hope that AI solutions can help "solve" deeply complex social, economic and environmental challenges.
The second risk is acceleration. According to one estimate, the market for digital services in the fossil-fuel sector could grow 500% in the next five years, saving oil producers about $150 billion (4.7 trillion baht) annually.
Digitisation, automation and AI have untapped potential both to strengthen sustainability and to optimise exploitation.
To harness the Fourth Industrial Revolution to sustainability, we need to start directing its technologies better and stronger now. ©2021 Project Syndicate
Victor Galaz is Deputy Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Program Director at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and author of the forthcoming book 'Dark Machines'.
