There are reasons to worry about AI – but it is already helping us protect the planet, too

When you think of artificial intelligence, you probably think of stupid answers provided by chatbots – why not try glueing cheese to pizza? – and its soaring electricity needs. In the background, though, AI is transforming our ability to deal with many of the world’s worst environmental problems.

Its superhuman ability to crunch data, detect patterns and predict events is cutting energy use, food waste and traffic jams, enabling the mass monitoring of endangered wildlife, fighting poachers, and making better and faster climate and weather forecasts.

Of course, the AI revolution raises some concerns. But I think the benefits outweigh the downsides. I’ll explain why, after this week’s top stories.

Imagine you are scanning satellite data for signs of illegal loggers hacking down trees. The volume of data available is colossal, the equivalent of tens of thousands of HD movies by my very rough estimate. By the time you have scoured all of that, if it were even possible, the criminals are long gone.

What if you could use all that data to predict where the deforestation was most likely to happen next? And you had data from a network of sound sensors providing alerts for the sound of chainsaws and another monitoring social media for mentions of deforestation activity? This is all possible thanks to AI, in particular the machine-learning variety of the technology. To learn more, I contacted three experts.

“AI is particularly good at detecting patterns among very large amounts of data that no team of humans could process,” said Dr Alina Patelli, at Aston University in Birmingham. “It learns to identify correlations that are sometimes subtle, even counterintuitive, and can easily escape even the trained eye of highly qualified human experts.”

Leveraging vast amounts of weather data is a good example, she said: “Running AI to correlate predicted droughts with the water demands of industrial farming will yield insights into the likely fluctuations in global food supply over the coming decades, giving scientists a head start in coming up with solutions.”

AI has already delivered weather forecast tools that are faster and cheaper than current supercomputer models – some can even run on a laptop. “That’s a huge development, because it has implications for disaster risk management, agriculture and energy infrastructure,” said Dr Mohammad Hossein Amirhosseini, at the University of East London. In other words, it can improve life-saving extreme weather warnings, help maximise crop yields and make electricity grids more efficient and resilient (pdf).

Running a grid is a delicate balancing act of matching supply to demand, and AI can anticipate and optimise changes, which is particularly useful as inherently variable renewable energy ramps up. The same applies in your home: balancing your heating, cooling and charging needs with weather forecasts and price data.

Dr Andrew Rogoyski, at the University of Surrey, said: “We don’t want to bet our future on the promise of future technologies, but AI does seem to offer the possibility of making big advances in key sciences and technologies that will help mitigate [against] the impact of climate change.”

“For example, there have been recent advances in nuclear fusion, where AI is being used to better control complex instabilities in the fusion plasmas, bringing the promise of very low-cost energy that bit closer,” he said.

There are lots of other examples: Wildbook uses computer vision to identify individual animals from jaguars to dolphins by their unique markings and is revolutionising wildlife tracking and anti-poaching efforts, said Amirhosseini, with other tech even predicting the likely location of poachers.

AI is powering cheap air pollution monitoring devices so smoggy hotspots around the world can be tackled. A food bin camera system backed by AI monitors waste and tells kitchen managers what to buy less of. AI will also help England’s National Parks make detailed maps (pdf) of their fragmented ecosystems at affordable cost to enable the best use of conservation funds.

Concerns over the rapid rise in the energy needs of data centres due to AI are valid, said Amirhosseini. “But we need to look at the broader picture. If AI is used to [cut carbon emissions], then the net environmental benefit can far outweigh the energy cost of training the models.” Furthermore, the increased demand from electric vehicles, air conditioning, heat pumps, and industry will far surpass that from data centres. And work on making the training of AI models more efficient may make the energy concern “a temporary blip”, said Rogoyski.

There is also the serious issue of biases in AI models. “They are as biased as the data used to train the underpinning software,” said Patelli. Rich western countries tend to have far more data than poorer, developing countries, meaning people in the latter could be ill-served if AI tools are used without careful thought.

This points to a deeper cultural issue, said Amirhosseini, which is “the risk of overrelying on automated systems and sidelining local knowledge and lived experience. We need to treat AI as a partner, not a substitute, for human judgment, community engagement, and scientific integrity.”

If we do that, AI can continue to make ever-larger differences in the real world to how we understand and protect our planet.

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The good news

The bad news

Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers

It is now 37 years since the American climatologist James Hansen famously confronted Congress over the threat of human-made global heating – and he is still sounding the alarm.

The 84-year-old continues to participate in protests, and use his academic platform to warn of the dangers of the climate crisis. In a 2023 interview with the Guardian, he labelled humanity “damned fools” for a lack of progress since his 1980s warning.

In February, a new analysis with colleagues concluded the international 2C target is “dead”.

Nominated by reader Sue Russell

If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email [email protected]

Demystifying a climate concept you’ve heard in the headlines

Rewilding is a much used – and much misunderstood – example of climate jargon. It is a practice that aims to reinstate natural processes that have disappeared from habitats often due to human intervention – but it is usually a form of human intervention in itself. It has become a bit of a catch-all term that can lead to the belief that rewilding is just to let nature take its course, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Rewilding projects are often enormous in scale and take skills such as restoration and conservation, implementing practices that are debated person to person, not just leaving things to run wild. Above all, rewilding is vital when used as a solution to the problems wrought by climate change, such as flooding and biodiversity loss.

For more Guardian coverage of rewilding, click here

One image that sums up the week in environmental news

Credit: Tobias Everke

For such a storied space, New York City’s Central Park has struggled through years of neglect – but perhaps no longer.

In this photo series for the Guardian, Tobias Everke captures major redevelopments in the park – from new walkways and streams to a $160m community centre, which also exists to “restore natural ecologies” around the park’s water bodies.

One standout feature: a new lawn that will evolve much as the city does across the seasons. It will naturally transform into a swimming pool in summer, and then an ice rink through winter.

For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here