Innovations - NY

From monitoring deforestation to designing low-carbon materials

Steam and exhaust rise from a chemical factory and coking plant in Germany. Photo by Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning

theverge.com - by James Vincent - June 25, 2019

The AI renaissance of recent years has led many to ask how this technology can help with one of the greatest threats facing humanity: climate change. A new research paper authored by some of the field’s best-known thinkers aims to answer this question, giving a number of examples of how machine learning could help prevent human destruction.

The suggested use-cases are varied, ranging from using AI and satellite imagery to better monitor deforestation, to developing new materials that can replace steel and cement (the production of which accounts for nine percent of global green house gas emissions).

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change. Illustration by Harry Campbell.

newyorker.com - by Atul Gawande - July 29, 2013

. . . In our era of electronic communications, we’ve come to expect that important innovations will spread quickly. Plenty do: think of in-vitro fertilization, genomics, and communications technologies themselves. But there’s an equally long list of vital innovations that have failed to catch on. The puzzle is why.

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