Mary Stevens10 Oct 2024
What is Greening AI?
Greening AI is a new initiative led by Friends of the Earth, supported by the Green Screen Coalition Catalyst Fund with the backing of the Mozilla Foundation. We are delivering the project with We Are Open. The project aims to bridge the gap between AI technologies and their environmental impact, ensuring that environmental justice organisations and digital rights campaigners can work together to navigate this complex space.
The benefits and challenges of AI
Through the project we will bring together environmental justice advocates, digital rights campaigners and representatives from communities most affected by the roll-out of these technologies. The goal is to create shared principles and practical guidelines on how AI can be used responsibly, alongside recommendations for policy. As a trusted name in the environmental justice movement, we have the ability to bring people together – and to mainstream the conversation. Our goal is for the published report to become the go-to reference for organisations coming to grips with this tricky topic.
Like so many high emissions technologies, there are real benefits to the application of artificial intelligence for our movement. Alongside high-level capabilities for things like smart grids, precision weather forecasting, resource-efficient agriculture, and waste management, AI-backed tools also have the potential to support grassroots movements, supporting a range of activities from collective visioning (as in this inspiring project in informal settlements in New Delhi) to digesting technical documents and support with ‘back-office’ jobs. But along with the benefits, digital technologies have a big carbon footprint and emissions are ballooning.
So what should we do? What do the responsible choices look like? And how might we continue to influence policy-makers to make the ethical choice the default?
That’s where our project, Greening AI policy – an influencing agenda, comes in.
What will the Greening AI project do?
The project is built around three key components:
- Research and collaboration: We have commissioned We Are Open to conduct desk research and host an online roundtable that brings together UK-based campaigners and international voices. This will allow us to develop a shared approach to the environmental impact of AI and ensure that the experience of communities impacted directly by the AI supply chain can be reflected.
- Shaping good practice: A core part of Greening AI is to create accessible, practical guidelines. These guidelines will be shared with environmental justice and digital rights organisations to help them make informed decisions about AI adoption. We want to ensure these technologies support the fight for a fair, fossil-free future, not undermine it.
- Communication and outreach: The final output of the project will be a detailed article for the Friends of the Earth Policy website. The article will explore the environmental impact of generative AI, and include recommendations for mitigating its harms. We will also develop a dissemination plan, to ensure the work reaches its target audience.
Why does this matter?
Back in the summer of 2023, after a period of initial research into the risks and opportunities of generative AI, we asked the following question: what if the national conversation about AI was less focused on business productivity and future existential risk, and more concerned with the existential crises that are happening right here, right now - the crises in people’s everyday lives AND the damage that we are doing to the planet?
Fast forward a year and the conversation has started to shift. The risks of disinformation and the environmental impacts are much more widely understood – although the solutions are less clear. This shift in awareness is partly thanks to the brilliant work of the Climate Action against Disinformation coalition – including our colleagues at Friends of the Earth USA. But this leaves environmental justice organisations in a difficult position.
Through this project, we aim to ensure that AI technologies are deployed in a way that promotes environmental justice. We want to see these concerns at the heart of conversations around AI regulation and development – and we want fellow campaigners to feel empowered to make these asks, on a topic that might not be in their normal comfort zone.
What’s next?
We are looking to host the roundtable in November, and to publish the final report in January 2025. You can follow us on LinkedIn for updates, or contact us directly if you would like to know more.