May 2024 – New publication! van der Ven, H. Corry, D., Elnur, R., Provost, V.,Syukron, M. (2024). Generative AI and Social Media May Exacerbate the Climate Crisis Global Environmental Politics. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00747.
Abstract: The contributions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and social media to the climate crisis are often underestimated. To date, much of the focus has been on direct emissions associated with the life cycle of tech products. In this forum article, we argue that this narrow focus misses the adverse and indirect impacts of generative AI and social media on the climate. We outline some of the indirect ways in which generative AI and social media undermine the optimism, focus, creativity, and veracity required to address the climate crisis. Our aim is twofold. First, we seek to balance the tide of optimism about the role of digitalization in addressing the climate crisis by offering a skeptic’s perspective. Second, we outline a new research agenda that moves beyond counting directly attributable carbon emissions and proposes a more comprehensive accounting of the indirect ways in which social media and generative AI adversely impact the sociopolitical conditions required to address the climate crisis.
April 2024 – Viola Jasmine Provost and Hamish van der Ven will be presenting research at the ISA 2024 Annual Convention – April 3rd – 6th 2024 in San Francisco. View the program here: https://www.isanet.org/Conferences/ISA2024.
October 2023 – Viola Jasmine Provost and Muh Syukron will be presenting research at the 2023 Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. View the program here: https://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/2023radboud/.