As energy use associated with artificial intelligence climbs and sustainability challenges intensify, research is needed to make AI systems more efficient and more effective for environmental research.
The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative, the Cornell AI Initiative and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability have announced an inaugural round of grant funding to support research at the intersection of AI and climate science.
Eight Cornell research teams have been chosen as recipients of AI and Climate Fast Grants, to explore strategies to reduce energy use in AI industries and to integrate AI in environmental research.
"AI can be part of the solution for climate sustainability, but it is also part of the problem," said Thorsten Joachims, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science and Information Science and director of the Cornell AI Initiative. "In this call, we are addressing both aspects: to mitigate climate impacts both from AI and with AI."
The growth of AI itself has become an issue of grave environmental concern. Recent work by Cornell Engineering researchers found that at the current rate of AI growth, by 2030, AI would contribute between 24 million and 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and use between 731 million and 1.125 billion cubic meters of water.
"Artificial intelligence is transforming society," said Benjamin Houlton, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). "We must ensure that the approach to that transformation is deeply people-centered, identifying risks and rewards, minimizing the energy consumption of AI itself and unleashing the power of AI to create benefits for the public good."
CALS and Cornell Atkinson jointly oversee The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative, which is disbursing the funds, between $10,000 and $25,000 per research team. The Cornell AI Initiative, launched in 2022, is a university-wide radical collaboration that seeks to inform basic research into AI and to leverage AI and machine learning technologies to solve problems across many fields.
Udit Gupta, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell Tech, is among the inaugural AI and Climate Fast Grant recipients. He seeks to improve the sustainability, efficiency and scalability of AI with "EcoGPT," a generative AI interface that will enable users to parlay minimally slower AI response times into smaller carbon footprints.
"Industry benchmarks show that relaxing output generation by small delays - even a couple hundred milliseconds - can improve overall system throughput and energy efficiency by 2.5 times, highlighting a steep trade-off between lowered response times and system efficiency," Gupta said. "Our EcoGPT user studies will produce the first quantitative dataset on user preferences for 'green AI,' providing companies with the empirical evidence needed to design practical and sustainable service tiers."
Other AI and Climate Fast Grant projects:
- Harnessing AI to strengthen nature's defense against climate change: forest integrity in Cambodia, led by Dena Clink, research associate in the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology;
- Low-cost active climate monitoring with underactuated agents, led by Sarah Dean, assistant professor of computer science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science; and Alexander Terenin, assistant research professor at the Center for Data Science for Enterprise and Society in Cornell Research & Innovation;
- AI-enabled synthesis of bespoke unconventional solar-cell materials, led by John Marohn, professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S); and Michael Lawler, adjunct professor of physics in A&S;
- AI-powered confidence in additive construction, led by Sriramya Nair, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering; and Nils Napp, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, both in Cornell Engineering;
- AI-enabled robotic eDNA sampling of waterways, led by Kirstin Petersen, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (Cornell Engineering); and Peter McIntyre, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology (CALS);
- Motivating climate action using human-AI dialogues, led by David Rand, professor of information science and marketing and management communications (Cornell Bowers); and Gordon Pennycook, associate professor of psychology (A&S); and
- Resilience scanner: leveraging AI to accelerate global adoption of municipal climate adaptation technologies, led by Anthony Townsend, senior research associate at Cornell Tech.
Krisy Gashler is a writer for the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.
