Could Climate Disinformation be Turbocharged by Generative AI?
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March 7, 2024
“The climate emergency cannot be confronted while online public and political discourse is polluted by fear, hate, confusion, and conspiracy,” one campaigner warned.
Members of a global coalition on Thursday released a report detailing “significant and immediate dangers” that artificial intelligence poses to the climate emergency.
“AI companies spread hype that they might save the planet, but currently they are doing just the opposite,” said Michael Khoo at Friends of the Earth, part of the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition. “AI companies risk turbocharging climate disinformation, and their energy use is causing a dangerous increase to overall U.S. consumption, with a corresponding increase of carbon emissions.”
As AI has rapidly developed over the past year, global leaders and experts—from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—have sounded the alarm about the technology furthering disinformation on all topics.
The World Economic Forum earlier this year “identified AI-generated mis- and disinformation as the world’s greatest threat (followed by climate change),” notes the new CAAD report. Citing cases in Slovakia and the United States, it says that “the world is already seeing how AI is being used for political disinformation campaigns.”
“AI models will allow climate disinformation professionals and the fossil fuel industry to build on their decades of disinformation campaigns.”
For the full article, please visit:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/artificial-intelligence-climate-change
