PANEL DISCUSSION: Climate and Sustainability

Within the theme of Climate and Sustainability, 5 challenges will be run, where a panel of speakers will present a use case, project or initiative relating to each challenge and ask the Challenge group to share resource, experience and expertise to look towards finding a solution/ possible solutions relating to each.

It is incumbent on us to transform industries, markets, and behaviours to change the course of climate change and to lay the foundations for a positive, safe, and responsible digital future. These priorities aren’t isolated: powerful new technologies, including AI, can play a critical role in underpinning the solutions needed to tackle our most pressing societal challenges. Today’s technological revolution offers an era of unprecedented innovation and systems’ change. If harnessed in the right way, emerging technologies, with AI at the vanguard, could be transformational in efforts to tackle some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. Examples include AI-infused clean distributed energy grids, to smart urban mobility, precision agriculture, sustainable supply chains, environmental monitoring and enforcement, and enhanced weather and disaster prediction and response. Perhaps harnessing AI for environmental applications is the biggest challenge to set AI – as without a “safe Earth” our future on this planet is in question.

These concepts will be explored in a series of challenges. Some of these will be broad to begin with (where areas to focus on can be decided as a group during the challenge session) whereas others will be more specific, with the expected, ideal outcome to aim for, known.