The Impact of AI, Blockchain, and other Frontier Technologies on Climate took place on October 11, 2023. The event was organized as part of the IEEE Technology Center for Climate webinar series Empowering The Green Tech Revolution: From Design to Deployment. Co-organised by the IEEE Technology Center for Climate (ITCC) and Reuters Events, the webinar looked at how frontier technologies such as AI, blockchain or immersive reality can contribute to tackling climate goals with disruptive solutions and, at the same time, have their own impact on climate.
Panel
- Jyotika Athavale, President-Elect 2023, IEEE Computer Society, Director RAS Architecture, Synopsys
- Shivam Kishore, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
- Babak Falsafi, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
- Michael Heiss, Siemens AG (Austria)
- Celine Caira, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (moderator)
Related Resources on Frontier Technologies
The Industry Connections (IC) program from IEEE SA has published several white papers on extended reality. The White Paper “Metaverse and its Governance“ includes a chapter a Sustainable Metaverse on the challenges of aligning emerging technologies with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and highlights concerns about sustainability in the context of the metaverse. Other White Papers published by the IC program are contributions to the discussions on Ethics and Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility and on Virtual Clones and the Right to your Identity.
IEEE Spectrum magazine has published articles on the issue of Frontier technologies (AI, immersive tech, blockchain) and the impact of these technologies on climate. We have curated some of these articles in anticipation of the webinar on Frontier Technology as they cover some of the issues that will be discussed such as how AI technology is used to improve models to track emissions, or using digital twins to model earth and give insights to simulate the earth’s climate, cool technology developed by start-ups and how would-be entrepreneurs can step up to play a role in a carbon neutral future and finally how the threat of climate change should be a concern for all technologist (guest post).
Survey on Frontier Technologies
The following questions were asked to participants in the Frontier Technologies webinar. The survey ran from October 11-18. Thank you to those who participated in the survey.
How optimistic are you about the potential of frontier technologies to address environmental challenges and promote sustainability? (221 answers)
How aware are you about the resource consumption of the frontier technologies your organization is currently using/is planning to use in the future? (220 answers)
Well aware – We know the exact net impact of these technologies
Somewhat aware – We have some indicators that give us a rough idea
Not really confident – We have not looked into this aspect
Do you think that having well-defined metrics for carbon footprint of frontier technologies will impact your decision on their adoption? (220 answers)
