Technology and Innovation
• Books
What is Planetary Health?
Artificial Intelligence and Innovation
AI is rapidly reshaping economies, decision-making, and daily life, offering enormous potential while posing significant social and environmental risks.
We are entering a Hybrid Tipping Zone, where the rapid mainstreaming of artificial intelligence (AI) and the global race for technological supremacy collide with human agency and planetary limits.
— Cornelia Walthers, PhD, Chair of the AI & Innovation Working Group
Despite the potential to boost global GDP by up to 14% by 2030, the unchecked expansion of AI poses significant risks to Planetary Health. Our growing digital dependency, the erosion of decision-making autonomy, and widening ecological imbalance are pushing humanity toward the edges of planetary boundaries. This shift threatens all of Earth’s life support systems.
20% of global electricity could be consumed by digital technologies by 2030
The environmental cost of AI is mounting: digital technologies may consume up to 20% of global electricity by 2030, and fewer than 1 in 3 AI initiatives include social or environmental impact assessments.
ProSocial AI acts as a counter-catalyst: a design and governance approach that seeks to ensures technology serves both people and the planet. The 4T Framework—Tailored, Trained, Tested, Targeted—guides AI systems to be context-relevant, inclusively trained, transparently validated, and purpose-driven. This approach is anchored in Hybrid Intelligence, leveraging the complementarity of Natural and Artificial intelligences, and grounded in Double Literacy, which integrates human literacy (self, society, sustainability) with algorithmic literacy (data, design, decision-making). ProSocial AI has the potential to harness technology to benefit both people and planet, ensuring these systems are working to mitigate rather than exacerbate environmental decline.
Want to help shape the future of technology for planetary wellbeing? Join the Planetary Health Roadmap’s AI Working Group by contacting corneliacwalther@gmail.com.
Key Resources
Technology and Innovation
• Books
Human Leadership for Humane Technology
Technology and Innovation Resources
Technology and Innovation
Between Doom and Hype: How to Build AI so that it Helps People and Planet. Reuters.
• News
Noncommunicable Diseases Health and Care Systems
Central venous catheter care and the healthcare–environment interface: Outcomes of a quality improvement initiative in a resource-constrained ICU. Frontiers in Public Health.
• Research & Reports
Air Pollution Research and Evaluation
Assessing the efficacy of a low-cost air pollution monitoring device for environmental and occupational exposure assessments. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.
• Research & Reports
Infectious Diseases Disaster Preparedness and Adaptation
New Tools Saved a Million Lives from Malaria Last Year but Progress Under Threat as Drug Resistance Rises
• News
Climate Change Technology and Innovation
How the Global South can Chart a New Path for AI. Knowledge at Wharton.
We are the last analogue generation—able to remember life before algorithms—and this vantage point gives us a rare responsibility to shape an AI-enabled future that supports the flourishing of people and planet.
• News, Policy Briefs
News Related to Artificial Intelligence and Innovation
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