A New AI Lexicon: Sustainability

Résumé analytique

In an essay for the AI Now Institute's "A New AI Lexicon" project, Centre Research Director Sonja Solomun and Centre Research Fellow Rachel Bergmann present "A Call for Environmental Justice in AI," part of a series cultivating alternative narratives to dominant critical AI discourse. The authors argue that mainstream "sustainable AI" discussion should focus on local communities and their relational experiences with AI, environmental justice, and economic justice, rather than on broad "tech for climate" initiatives. They contend that much sustainable-AI research and many related initiatives strip out racial and class injustice, treating AI as an apolitical tool for solving global problems such as gender equality or food security regardless of place-based context. Framing sustainability narrowly as the intersection of technology and "the" environment forecloses connections to economic justice issues such as labour fights and public health, and often overlooks the place-based efforts of specific communities, such as the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ).

The authors argue that grounding critical AI research in an environmental justice framework helps scholars consider AI's role in global systems of environmental, social, and economic exploitation while situating that violence in specific places and contexts. In practice, this shift would move the field beyond computational efficiency as the sole measure of technological sustainability, toward environmental justice assessments developed by those directly impacted and community benefits agreements in areas surrounding AI development, among other intersectional initiatives.