AI and Sustainability: the opportunities and risks we face

Abstract

The tools and concept associated with "Artificial Intelligence" have gained significant prominence among consumers over recent years, as well as great business interest among investors and companies. However, and like any "El Dorado", the implications of these new solutions must be analysed and safeguarded - whether in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability.

The dawn of significant advances in the transposition and improvement of mathematical algorithms framed within the broad concept of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI), namely with the current high computing capacities and large amounts of data for model training, allowed the emergence of multiple AI-based applications to solve complex problems (e.g., health, energy, industry, transportation, marketing, etc.). The success of those applications and developments led to two global effects: the interest of markets and business investors, and the wide dissemination of this new paradigm to consumers and citizens (namely through Large Language Models, popularised by the ChatGPT solution, by the company OpenAI).