A meeting of two worlds
Dr Vian Sharif, Founder & President, NatureAlpha, and CBA Ambassador reflects on artificial intelligence and nature
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.” – Robert Kennedy
We are positioned at a profound moment of inflection and reflection amidst a world changing at breakneck speed. A moment where the natural world meets the world of artificial intelligence, where the ability to achieve the previously unimaginable at scale meets our personal need for internal peace and connection, and where the vastness of our human potential stretches before us. Yet with great change comes the possibility of great opportunity.
At the cutting edge of our technological revolution are profound advances not only in generative language models, but in generative world models—multi-dimensional representations of our planet and the myriad relationships that operate within it, previously unknown, which are used by AI to make predictions, model outcomes, and ultimately make decisions. Satellite data, on-the-ground monitoring, and scientific research can be processed at a rate faster than ever to surface insights about the natural world that have never before been understood. Significant releases by the world’s largest technology players point to this phenomenon continuing at pace.
But why should we care? Because with these tools applied to better understand our natural world, invisible connections become visible.
This is useful intelligence.
How business intersects with our natural world is no longer hidden. Instead, it is now within our grasp to understand in ways that were previously inaccessible and model the future. How water supply in our vast programme of data centre expansion will dwindle or lead to flooding as nature fades, how implementing mitigation or circular practices within a business process can minimise risks to operational capacity and lower the cost of capital, or how nature is protected where it should be, in service to all citizens of our common home, can be revealed. Where, how, and when we make these decisions can be evaluated, measured, and implemented.
Yet this also reveals a paradox. In talking with indigenous peoples, these connections are not new, but ancient. These are relationships between systems, animal and mineral, that have been mapped over generations and centuries. The ebb and flow of life is central to multi-generational decision-making. And every one of their decisions depends on nature, whose services support us in every single facet of our lives – from feeding us to enabling our businesses to function.
These insights, which to us are newly revealed, are, instead, helping us remember what these custodians of nature have always known.
As the work of the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance has shown already, with the arrival of our times and our technology, we have been given an opportunity to reimagine. The creation of the AI Fellowship for a Nature Positive Economy serves this and nature’s mission.
These new insights provide a powerful leverage point. Intersect this with the potential leverage achieved when deployed across our private, financial and public sector decision-making, and the opportunity to bend the arc to write the positive history of our generation is surely unimaginably compounded.
Photo: Pexels/Marek Piwnicki
