Earth Talks with Matthew James Bailey

On this podcast we talk about our Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and the Environment with the international expert Matthew James Bailey.

Podcast Introduction

Artificial Intelligence, AI, has become front and centre and grabbed the public’s attention over the last year or so as products such as ChatGPT and others have opened up AI in a way that people can start to see the application in everyday life.

However, AI incorporates an incredibly wide range of types, uses and potential uses.  It can be considered as weak, where it simply answers questions or does simple tasks, or it can be considered strong, where complex systems are human-like, performing sophisticated operations, solving problems without human intervention.

But what is the intersection between AI and the environment – do they intersect? How do they intersect?  When do they intersect?  Are we to be worried?

We know that we are the earth and the earth is us, so by that definition AI is also earth as it comes from us.  Also, like the majority of products we make, AI will leave a significant footprint – to build, operate and to decommission.

Just as the earth’s accelerated change is a reflection of our behaviour over the last 100 years, AI, the simulation of human intelligence in machines, also reflects us.

So what does that mean for our future – it means that who we are, the way we connect to and interact as a species with our mother earth, will be seen in the development of AI.

There are calls for ethical frameworks to be quickly put in place for AI so that is might protect humans, however, this arguably is missing the bigger issue… our ethics right now are not protecting the earth.