How should Europe approach AI in the strategic areas of climate, health, manufacturing and mobility?

In Detail 30 Sep 2020

A new report – Digital Transformation of European Industry: A Policy Perspective – addresses the important topic of how Europe should deal with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the strategic areas of climate, health, manufacturing and mobility.

The 24-page report explores the impact of Artificial Intelligence in general and identifies sector-specific opportunities and concerns about the wider deployment of AI. 

Aimed at business and policy decision-makers, it offers a scenario-based impact assessment instrument for AI policy development.

The report is a combined effort by five EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) – EIT Manufacturing, EIT Urban Mobility, EIT Health, EIT Climate-KIC, with EIT Digital as coordinator.

In the ‘Energy and climate’ section, the report notes that the predictive capacity of AI has given it an important role in driving more effective climate action.  In the climate domain, AI’s ability to generate insights into the future has been used mainly in two areas: Land-management and extreme weather forecasting.

However, the initiatives that really use AI in this field are still relatively few, and there is a need to move beyond AI applications that reduce climate risks and the negative externalities of economic activity, to applications that can help transform whole systems – ideally nested within larger portfolios of social, economic and financial innovations and missions.

Harald Rauter, Head of Emerging Disruptive Technology Experimentation at EIT Climate-KIC said:

“The development of AI should be harnessed to assess the environmental impact of new technologies. Excessive focus on efficiency gains and cost-effectiveness could hide the detrimental systemic effects that some innovations produce on the climate. EIT Climate-KIC holds the view that Europe should aim to lead in leveraging and balancing AI for sustainability. This requires a rethinking of the kind of return we want from AI innovation, which could be used for improving the sustainability of products and to reduce the environmental impacts of production processes and energy consumption.”

READ THE report

ALSO: Check out EIT Digital’s Makers & Shapers video on Artificial Intelligence, featuring prominent experts from business and politics like Philips CEO Frans van Houten, Member of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, Element AI CEO Jean-François Gagné, and Zelros CEO Christophe Bourguignat.

 
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