Undercurrents: July 2024
Seaweed Generation's roundup of company news and perspective on all things climate.
Blythe Taylor, Chief of Staff
There’s no escaping it. The role of AI in our daily lives is increasing at an exponential rate. The tools and processes used in how we shop, travel, communicate, entertain and inform ourselves are all using AI systems to enhance and streamline our experiences. But while the efficiencies are undeniable, we’ve all heard the growing backlash against an all encompassing AI take-over.
The media often focuses on the potential threats posed by a tech revolution that only a limited few fully comprehend. Those in creative fields are arguing passionately that machines cannot, and should not, directly replace humans in the creation of art. Public concern against ChatGPT’s film ‘The Last Screenwriter’ saw its private screening in Soho’s Prince Charles Cinema pulled last month, highlighting the strength of feeling of those not even directly impacted.
However, in the world of climate tech we’ve seen some genuinely exciting breakthroughs that can elicit the same passion, but thankfully from a positive perspective. Only this week the Financial Times reported on NeuralGCM, a new approach that combines machine learning and existing forecasting tools to ‘dramatically improve the accuracy and speed of atmospheric climate simulation’. This is going to have a huge impact on how we understand climate trends, and help in the prediction of extreme weather events. Automated biodiversity monitoring is another key area of development where AI is used to recognise and identify species from image and sound recordings.
The role AI can play in our battle against climate change and nature loss is enormous, and something that is gaining increasing recognition. Just look at where philanthropic funding is focusing right now. The Bezos Earth Fund unveiled an AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge – under which up to $100 million in grants will be awarded. The 2024 Roddenberry Prize also has an AI focus and will award $1 million to an early-stage, scientific or technology venture leveraging AI for a better future that addresses at least one of the UN’s Sustainable Development goals. This is amazing progress, and one which should see the development of innovative climate and environmental focused tech that can make a global difference.
Regular readers of Undercurrents will know the emphasis SeaGen places on data gathering and the potential for machine learning to enhance efficiency and automation, especially in monitoring nature and biodiversity with our own marine robotics. It’s this focus that saw Paddy Estridge, our CEO, present at the UWIFIC 5IR Artificial Intelligence annual research conference in the Caribbean. Here she spoke about the way AI can help monitor and track problematic Sargassum seaweed that wreaks environmental havoc when it’s washed ashore.
Across its multiple applications, what is clear is how important AI will be in leveraging the climate and environmental monitoring data available today. This new frontier in machine learning can not only disentangle the complexities of numerous Big Data sets, but resulting models will help us identify risk factors and mitigation scenarios.
So whilst the pace of change can feel discomforting at times, taking a step back to recognise the amazing potential for AI in our battle against an increasingly unpredictable climate can certainly help.
Progress and Press
Wondery’s Wow In The World podcast
We were delighted to have the AlgaRay feature in Wondery’s science podcast for kids ‘Wow in the World’. What an amazing way to encourage kids to engage in technology and the world around them.