The role of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
A review of artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals is necessary given its emergence and steadily expanding impact across numerous sectors. However, present research priorities ignore crucial elements. In order to support AI’s rapid progress and promote sustainable development, regulatory monitoring and knowledge are required. Failure to do so might lead to lapses in ethics, safety, and openness.
Here, we demonstrate and discuss the consequences of whether or not AI can be used to meet all 169 targets and 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The methods presented at the end of this study were utilized to characterize relationships, and they may be summed up as a consensus-based expert elicitation procedure. These techniques were influenced by past research that mapped the connections between the SDGs. The results are summarized.
Evidence that AI has the ability to either aid or hinder the achievement of each SDG. The percentages in the inner circle of the figure represent the proportions within each SDG, while those at the top represent the percentage of all objectives that could be impacted by AI. The outside circle of the picture also displays the results for the three major groupings, which are society, economy, and environment. The inner shaded region and the values in brackets display the outcomes when the type of evidence is taken into account.
AI and environmental outcomes
Fig. 4 analyses the final set of SDGs, those relating to the environment. These three SDGs concern life on land, life in the water, and climate action . We found 25 goals (93%) for the Environment group where AI may be an enabler. The ability to analyse massive, interconnected databases to create collaborative actions targeted at protecting the environment could be one benefit from AI.
However, as previously mentioned, the high energy requirements for AI applications, particularly if non-carbon-neutral energy sources are utilized, could impede efforts to fulfil SDG 13 on climate action. In addition, even though there are numerous examples of how AI is being used to enhance biodiversity monitoring and conservation40, it is possible that increased access to information about ecosystems related to AI could lead to over-exploitation of resources, even though this misuse has not yet been sufficiently documented. Below, where gaps in AI research are now being taken into consideration, this topic is further explained.
Towards sustainable AI
The immense wealth that AI-powered technology has the potential to create may benefit those who are already wealthy and educated, leaving others in a worse financial situation as a result of job displacement. Globally, the growing economic significance of AI could lead to more inequality as a result of the world’s unequal distribution of computer and educational resources. Additionally, the biases already present in the data used to train AI algorithms may be exacerbated, eventually leading to more discrimination. Another issue is the use of AI to create computational (commercial, political) propaganda based on big data (also known as “big nudging”) that is disseminated via social media by unreliable AI agents with the intention of polarizing the public’s opinion.
Limitations of the research
The analysis that is being offered reflects the writers’ viewpoint. The authors may have overlooked some research on how AI might effect particular SDGs or there may not yet be published evidence on this interlinkage. However, the techniques used made an effort to reduce the assessment’s subjectivity. Several writers evaluated and discussed how AI might impact the accomplishment of each SDG, and a number of research were examined for each interlinkage. Additionally, each interlinkage was discussed by a small group of authors until agreement was reached on its nature, as was covered in the Methods section.
