New Delhi: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not an end in itself, and its value lies in how it is applied to solve real-world problems, including improving system efficiency, and help societies anticipate and respond to climate risks, Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav has said.
He was speaking at the launch of the book, Smarter Than the Storm: Championing the AI-Climate Nexus for a Truly Sustainable Future, authored by Amitabh Kant and Siddharth Sinha.
“The world of Artificial Intelligence is indeed a storm moving in our direction. The only way we cannot just survive but also thrive amid this storm is by making human experience the centre of it. The human race must commit to AI not for the sake of AI, but AI for the sake of humans, and the planet we inhabit,” Yadav said at the event in Delhi on Tuesday.
He added that India is moving in the right direction on dealing with the inherent contradictions of AI.
Kant, former G20 sherpa, said this is a time of great disruption. “We are seeing the end of globalisation. The post-World War II era has come to an end…global value chains have come to an end. They’re broken. But we are living in an era which is going to see the biggest rise of productivity ever because of data machine learning and artificial intelligence. And this technology is going to be a general-purpose technology which will transform every single sector of the economy,” he said.
The AI race, Kant added, will be won by those who use AI to transform learning outcomes, health outcomes, nutritional standards, but also those who address AI’s energy intensive nature. “AI today consumes more energy than the country of Japan. AI race will be won by those who do optimisation of computing power with more sophisticated software, but less computing power,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}The AI race, Kant added, will be won by those who use AI to transform learning outcomes, health outcomes, nutritional standards, but also those who address AI’s energy intensive nature. “AI today consumes more energy than the country of Japan. AI race will be won by those who do optimisation of computing power with more sophisticated software, but less computing power,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Sinha, the co-author of the book, who specialises in the interplay of AI and climate, said: “This book is really about people, not just about AI and climate but also about people.” “As we all know, AI can contribute…from predicting floods to predicting wildfires to enabling a small villager in India to create energy with some of the largest companies in India and even the ability today to predict when the next disease or outbreak will hit. AI has completely revolutionized, it has completely transformed the world as it is today,” Sinha, who has previously worked at NITI Aayog, the G20 Secretariat, added.