Critics argue AI’s climate benefits are unproven while an Nvidia investigation highlights the industry’s urgent need for credible sustainability and accountability.
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This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Opinion: The climate case for AI has not been made —By Mary Nichols, distinguished counsel at the UCLA School of Law and the former chair of the California Air Resources Board, and Jeremy Tamanini, the founder of Dual Citizen, a sustainability research and advisory firm This week, as countries meet in Antalya, Turkey for the United Nations climate conference, one topic is likely to dominate the conversation: artificial intelligence. The host has already called on countries to commit to ensuring that AI is designed, powered, and deployed in ways that support climate action. But so far, industries around the world aren’t doing nearly enough to harness the technology to actually drive down the greenhouse-gas emissions heating up the planet. AI companies like to make very optimistic claims about AI’s potential to help address climate change. The reality is far less promising. Read the full story. Meet the ecologist revealing the invisible networks that revive rainforests Tropical forests are our planet’s biggest terrestrial carbon sink, accounting for around 40% of carbon stored on land. Forest ecologist Daisy Dent, a senior scientist at ETH Zurich, is part of an international network of researchers working to decipher the networks of animal and plant interactions that enable some forests to recover after destruction. The goal is a low-cost, high-impact alternative to typical carbon-crediting schemes, which plant huge areas with a single species of tree. For over a decade, her research has helped show that these large “monocrop” programs could be expensive mistakes—and that more resilient forests can rebound naturally in just a few decades, re-creating ecosystems that suck up vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Learn more about Dent, her work, and her impact on how we understand the role rainforests play in regulating our
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