AI provides opportunities for the future, but at what cost?
When used correctly, AI offers significant benefits. The AI machinery that generates language, images, and much more is impressive and increasingly useful in daily life. AI solves medical puzzles that heal more and more people. AI contributes to more efficient production and distribution of renewable energy, more effective use of material resources, and much more. I am personally involved in a project where AI is used to enhance learning processes among underprivileged children that have fallen behind normal progression in school. This project aims to help these young people, potentially at risk of social exclusion, to find new opportunities in the workforce.
But the development and use of AI also hurts. AI consumes an increasing share of the planet’s resources, and the growth of this consumption is unsustainably high. What is happening, and what needs to be done?
The University of Oslo puts green AI on the agenda
The answer to these questions is complex and requires increased knowledge across a wide range of scientific disciplines. The University of Oslo (UiO) is actively engaged in this topic and proposes that these and other related questions should feature prominently in future AI research. But this challenge goes beyond AI alone. Norway’s largest computer science environment – the Department of Informatics at UiO –