AI and Sustainability: Will AI Save Our Planet?

At an increasing pace, artificial intelligence technologies are taking the driver’s seat in global business, consumer engagement, military operations, health, and public institutions. What are the implications of AI for sustainability? Can/will AI (as part of innovation/digitalization) save our planet?

 ***MEDIA MUST RSVP TO ATTEND***

WHAT:             This panel, organized by the Center for Responsible AI (R/AI) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, examines the role — both positive and negative — of intelligent systems in global sustainability.

WHEN:            April 13, 2021, 12-1pm EST

WHO:             

• Host: Mona Sloane, Senior Research Scientist, R/AI. Mona Sloane is a sociologist working on inequality in the context of AI design and policy. She frequently publishes and speaks about AI, ethics, equitability and policy in a global context. Mona is a Fellow with NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK), and an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, a Senior Research Scientist at the NYU Center for Responsible AI, and is part of the inaugural cohort of the Future Imagination Collaboratory (FIC) Fellows at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts

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• Venkatramani Balaji has headed the Modeling Systems Division at Princeton University’s Cooperative Institute on Modeling the Earth System (CIMES) since 2003. He was among the first recipients of French President Macron’s Make Our Planet Great Again award marking the second anniversary of the Paris Climate Accord. He has served on scientific advisory panels for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the MaxPlanck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, and is currently on the Science Review Group of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. More here.

• Eric Nost is Assistant Professor in Geography, Environment and Geomatics at University of Guelph. Eric Nost is a geographer researching how data and technology inform conservation. He draws on and contributes to the fields of political ecology, science and technology studies, and digital geographies. Eric Nost does research how data technologies inform environmental governance. For the past several years, Nost has collaborated in an effort to collate and visualize U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data on the North American hazardous waste trade. More here.

• Fernando Perez-Cruz, Adjunct Professor at the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich and Chief Data Scientist at the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC), a joint venture between EPFL and ETH Zurich. A Former member of the technical staff at Bell Labs and a Machine Learning Research Scientist at Amazon. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University under a Marie Curie Fellowship and an associate professor at University Carlos III in Madrid. He has also held positions at the Gatsby Unit (London), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (Tuebingen), BioWulf Technologies (New York).

• Carrol Plummer is CEO of Vivent, an ag-tech business that aims to deliver autonomous horticulture systems for growers and speed up product development for agrochemical companies so that we can grow healthy food with less environmental impact. She is an experienced entrepreneur focused on deep tech innovations. 

RSVP:               Click here to register for the event. Media must RSVP to Karl Greenberg at [email protected] to attend.

ABOUT:           While AI consumes copious amounts of energy (the creation of a single big-data model can consume several trans-Atlantic flights worth of energy), it could also play an important role in global sustainability (fleets of submersible robots are helping to clean barrier reefs of invasive species).    

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute. A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences as part of a global university, with close connections to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. NYU Tandon is rooted in a vibrant tradition of entrepreneurship, intellectual curiosity, and innovative solutions to humanity’s most pressing global challenges. Research at Tandon focuses on vital intersections between communications/IT, cybersecurity, and data science/AI/robotics systems and tools and critical areas of society that they influence, including emerging media, health, sustainability, and urban living. We believe diversity is integral to excellence, and are creating a vibrant, inclusive, and equitable environment for all of our students, faculty and staff. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.

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