Climate And AI

By Zile HumaJanuary 18, 2024(The writer is a graduate of

University of Oxford in Public Policy.)

Increasing role of artificial intelligence in

various fields;
The increasing role of artificial intelligence in various fields is
bringing drastic revolutions to solve many problems. The entire
world has come together to collaborate on numerous AI-led
projects, maximizing their benefits.
‘AI Innovation Grand Challenge’ was launched as part of a high-
level event of COP28 organized by the UN Climate Change
Technology Mechanism in collaboration with the COP28
presidency. The aim was to explore and target AI-driven climate
solutions in developed and developing countries.

AI as an invaluable instrument in tackling Climate

change
 Many efforts to combat climate change through mitigation
and adaptation can be accelerated with the application of
AI technologies.
 According to UN Climate Change Executive Secretary
Simon Stiell “We are seeing increasing evidence that
 artificial intelligence can prove an invaluable instrument in
tackling climate change.”

Reduce the negative impact of climate change:

 AI can be used in many ways to reduce the negative
impacts of climate change.
 The use of AI in early warning systems is already playing an
important role.
 Advance information about extreme weather conditions
like heatwaves, heavy rains, and glacier lake outburst
floods (GLOF) can help communities at the grassroots level
to better brace themselves for any climate-led disaster.
 Similarly, AI-powered technologies can also help improve
food security and supply chains which can be threatened
as a result of climate-led disasters.

Role of AI technology in Agriculture;

 The agriculture sector contributes a huge chunk of global
carbon emissions.
 AI technologies can help monitor emissions produced by
different crops in the agriculture sector, and the usage of
fertilizers can be improvised to have better crop yield and
reduce carbon emissions.

Weather prediction through AI

  Similarly, now AI can warn of an early hot summer in a
particular year, and farmers can make timely decisions to
sow a crop that can produce better yield according to that
particular period.
 AI technology can be used to send alerts in advance about
heavy rains, helping farmers to timely harvest their crops
to protect them from expected flooding.

Help in measuring Carbon emission;

 AI can play an important role in measuring and quantifying
the overall carbon emissions produced by any country.
 The capability of AI to process big data and produce
results can be useful to fix carbon credits and
accountability on states.
 AI grids can optimize demand and supply of energy
requirements efficiently.

AI Can also Support in Health System;

 AI can also support in health systems during and after any
disaster caused by climate change.
 For example, floods are followed by many water-borne
diseases like diarrhoea, malaria, etc.
 The affected population can get basic advice and
prescriptions on common diseases through telehealth and
‘AI doctors’.
  AI doctors can diagnose simple diseases through the
symptoms mentioned by the patients and prescribe
medicines and precautionary measures accordingly.

Combat shortage of Medical staff in Climate affected

areas;
It can also help cover the shortage of medical staff in climate-
affected areas, which is a common challenge in emergencies;
mapping in areas of glacier melting can help to rescue local
communities timely from glacier lake outburst floods (GLOF).

Help in Collecting Data about spread of disease;

AI-powered health systems can also help in collecting data
about the spread of diseases and patients due to a climate
change catastrophe to provide a direction to government-led
relief efforts.

Application of AI in education sector;

 Similarly, the application of AI in education is very useful,
especially after climate-led disasters when the
infrastructure of the education system is demolished.
 Moreover, AI technology can be used to create mass
awareness about climate change and its negative impacts.

Public Service Messages;

  Now public service messages on climate change can be
filmed through virtual characters and outreach can be
monitored through the power of AI.
 Overall, AI can facilitate nations to take expedited steps to
reduce climate change impacts through coordinated
efforts in the right direction.

Future Recommendations;
 To best utilize AI technologies, nations need to incorporate
AI-related strategies in their national policies.
 According to UAE Minister of State for Artificial
Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work
Applications HE Omar Sultan Al Olama: “Harnessing
artificial intelligence as a strategic asset to mitigate climate
change involves integrating it into national policies and
plans.
 It is also important that developed nations transfer
financial and technical support to developing and climate-
hit nations to develop their capacity to utilize AI
technologies to fight climate change.
 Otherwise, AI technological advancement has the
potential to further increase the gap in climate justice
among rich and poor nations.”

Conclusion;
AI has revolutionized the functions of the world in every field.
Nations must brace themselves to benefit from the positive
side of AI technologies and find solutions to challenges caused
by it.

*AI IN EDUCATION*
FAISAL BARIThe writer is a senior research fellow at the
Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an
associate professor of economics at Lums.

19 January 2024
INVESTMENTS in artificial intelligence are massive ($94 billion
in 2021 alone).
 We have all heard the rhetoric that AI is going to
revolutionise many areas and have a major impact on jobs
in several sectors.
 Where it might increase marginal productivity (output per
worker), it will automate jobs and thus replace workers.
This is already happening in some spaces.

Multimillion dollar funded AI in education

AI is expected to have a large impact on education too. There
were already over 30 multimillion-dollar-funded AI-in-
education corporations in 2022; some analysts expect AI in the
education market to be worth more than $20bn in less than
five years.

Automization of several processes might replace

teachers;
 Teachers fear they might be ‘replaced’ by AI systems
eventually.
 These apprehensions are a bit premature.
 AI is still developing and it is hard to predict all that it will
be able to eventually accomplish.
 Although there are early indications that some teacher
tasks can be automated, there is also a perception that
certain functions that teachers perform, and that are
relevant to socialisation and the development of deeper,
more contextualised learning, won’t be easy to automate.
 The future being unknown, let us see how technology
develops and is deployed.

Use of AI in Pakistan;
 Pakistan is not at the frontier of AI use in education. For
now, its most common application is seen in students
 using GPT-3 to do their assignments or assessments and
for writing essays.
 Professors are using AI-based systems to detect AI-
generated assignments/ assessments.
 The main concern so far is the increase in the incidence of
cheating.

Dark side of AI
 Submitting someone else’s work as one’s own is cheating
and hurts the learning process.
 Students, instead of trying to understand a topic, submit
something they might not even understand.
 The struggle is not to stop students from using AI, but to
convince them to use it for understanding concepts and
deepening their learning instead of cheating.
 This is not a major issue. There are programmes that
detect cheating and many professors use these.
 The cat-and-mouse game between programmes that allow
students to produce work without detection and
programmes that allow professors to detect cheating will
continue. Even before GPT, we had issues of plagiarism.

Intelligent tutoring system;

  What are more interesting, but have not come to Pakistan
in any significant manner yet, are intelligent tutoring
systems.
 ITS allow a person-based introduction of information and
then personalised feedback to students and the
monitoring of progress by students as well as teachers
(dashboards).
 They open up doors for increasing outreach, reducing the
cost per student and allowing more student-specific
learning opportunities.

How ITS can benefits Pakistan;

Pakistan, with some 23 million out-of-school children, faces
significant issues regarding the quality of school education, and
limited and low enrolments at undergraduate levels.
It could really benefit from ITS but it is a distant prospect.

Requirements for ITS

 We need good internet connectivity for this: we need
students to have computers and tablets at home; we need
teachers who are tech-savvy and are not afraid of what ITS
could do.
 We need ITS that are much better than where they are
right now.
  They still have a long way to go before they start delivering
well on the promise of personalisation and customisation
at low prices.
 A lot of development still needs to take place before it is
possible to see them being used for educating out-of-
school children or ensuring improved learning for millions
of children.
 There are also AI-assisted applications that allow language
translation and/ or mathematics learning.
 However, it is not clear if they assist student learning or
undermine it by taking away the need for learning
concepts and other things, very much like calculators did
with simple multiplication and division tasks.

Other AI based educational programmes;

 Other AI-based educational programmes are being

developed in areas like formative assessments, dialogue-
based tutoring systems, chatbots, learning network
orchestrators, AI-assisted virtual reality or games, and so
on.
 But in most of these areas, we do not have commercial
applications yet.
  We will only be able to assess viability and efficacy once
commercial applications are available and ‘cheap’ enough
to be deployed in Pakistan’s education market.
 And we will only be able to talk of what teacher-displacing
impact they are going to lead to when we are closer to
that point.
 For the moment, most of these are interesting and
promising possibilities from the point of view of
opportunities to enhance student learning. But their
future impact is as yet unclear.

Potential of AI in education;
 At the same time, there are many legitimate concerns
about AI in education.
 Apart from its impact on teaching jobs, increased student
surveillance, data collection, usage and sharing raise
legitimate ethical and legal concerns about confidentiality
and safety.
 As more commercial applications become available, these
concerns will need to be addressed as well.
 AI has a lot of potential in education. It can, in principle,
allow us to reach more children, ensure quality and do it at
a much lower cost than the current schooling model.
  If it delivers on its promise, it will change the education
sector significantly and many teacher-related tasks will
become automated.

Conclusion;
But we are far from there right now. It is not even clear if it can
deliver on all these promises. We have only seen GPT-3 so far,
and that is not a major game-changer. Given the potential and
promise, for the moment, it seems that an attitude of curiosity,
rather than fear, makes more sense.