Name: Four ways AI can help tackle climate change | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2021-04-22T17:55:15.000Z
Duration: 4 min 6 s
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Adverbs of degree

So really we're on the brink, I think, of a transformation

Basic passive voice

Adverbs of manner

Not only tackling the problem of climate change

but also actually trying to understand the system itself.

So some of the technological advances that we might be able to use

to combat climate change involve the ability

The question today is can we make solar panels or other materials

that are capable of generating energy in useful ways?

In the past, scientists and engineers have developed new materials,

by testing thousands of materials to find eventually the one that worked.

Today we can use machine learning and artificial intelligence

The reason that we can do it better in the computer

is that the computer allows millions of potential solutions

to be searched in ways that you couldn't do in the lab.

The reason that AI is important in the development of our understanding

of the Earth's system is that we're getting more and more data

As climate is changing, as weather patterns change,

is the land being more destabilised by excess water?

Or are the erosion patterns in the mountains

Extreme weather events as a result of climate change

But there's another aspect of this - cities are getting bigger,

areas that have always been vulnerable to natural hazards.

it becomes important to understand the system very quickly.

Examples include understanding the ways in which

Where to send relief supplies, who needs tents.

So all of these sorts of disaster relief processes

And we know, as we travel around congested cities,

that we spend a lot of time sitting in traffic,

to making transport systems more effective, more efficient,

so that you don't have these waves of static traffic on a motorway.

That everything is moving at the right speed

and gets from one place to another in the most effective way,

That's not something that, as individuals,

we're very good at planning for ourselves.

So if we want to reduce, recycle, reuse, can AI help us?

Well maybe. But it depends upon our motivation.

AI is a tool, it's not a master, and so our responses ultimately

will depend upon our own personal motivations,

and those of the society that we're part of.

But AI and machine learning can help us move in the right direction.