The acceleration of climate change and the limited time society has to meet sustainability milestones calls for a transformation in the way AI-IoT products and services are designed. While AI and IoT technologies have the potential to accelerate UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their rapid growth can deepen existing sustainability concerns if they are not developed with consideration of all sustainability goals.
It is essential that all three of the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability are embedded into the design of algorithms and models, and that their interrelations are analysed. This is a challenging task, not only because of the complexity of issues and the heterogeneous resources required, but also because of different, often conflicting, stakeholder perspectives on what it means to be sustainable. This complexity has led to a tendency to focus on specific sustainability issues at the expense of others, often leading to inappropriate decisions that do not promote the UN SDGs as intended.
This ITU recommendation document highlights current barriers hampering the adoption of a more comprehensive design approach and risks stemming from single-path sustainability approaches, and sketches design recommendations. The document starts discussing opportunities and adverse side-effects associated with approaching sustainability goals through common “single-path approaches” pursuing only specific aspects such as system performance or business growth.
The document stresses the need to embed considerations from the environmental, social, and business dimensions of sustainability into the design of algorithms, AI models and system architecture. It describes current barriers to a more comprehensive design approach and provides examples of AI-IoT systems’ side effects stemming from a design driven by single-path approaches. Long-term AI risks such as rebound effects, stemming from behavioral and business changes triggered by AI scale-up are discussed. The document concludes with recommendations for future design guidelines and policy.
You can find the document online.