Climate Change AI at Climate Week NYC 2024

Events

• AI for Climate Action: From Data to Impact – Sept 23, 2024, Glasshouse Chelsea + Livestream
• Building a Global Community in AI for Climate: Stocktake and Vision for the Next 5 Years – Sept 24, 2024, Elsie Rooftop
• Tech Together: Towards a Global Network for Public Interest Technology – Sept 24, 2024, Verizon Center at Cornell Tech
• AI: Climate Hero or Climate Villain? – Sept 25, 2024, Newsweek Office at One World Trade Center + Livestream

About

Climate Change AI (CCAI) empowers a global community of innovators, practitioners, and decision-makers to accelerate responsible climate action through the use of AI, by addressing critical gaps in expertise, education, coordination, and research-to-deployment infrastructure. CCAI is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and is run by a small team of staff alongside a dedicated team of 50 volunteers hailing from five continents and bringing significant breadth and depth of expertise on both AI and climate change.

AI for Climate Action: From Data to Impact

Monday, September 23, 2024 from 14:30-17:00 (US Eastern Time) - Glasshouse Chelsea (545 W 25th Street, Floor 21, New York, NY 10001) and via livestream

Artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to reshape the way we think about, plan for, and take action on climate change, across areas as diverse as energy, agriculture, and disaster response. However, fully realizing the potential of AI for climate action requires addressing critical gaps in data, capacity, and coordination. During this event, we will hear from innovators and practitioners who are impactfully leveraging AI to address climate challenges across sectors, and engage in discussion on what is needed to enable this kind of work responsibly at scale. We will also discuss Climate Change AI’s ongoing work on assessing critical data gaps in the AI-for-climate space. To this end, we aim to bring together researchers, practitioners, funders, and decision-makers who are already working in the AI-for-climate space, as well as newcomers to the space who are looking to learn more about how to get involved.

Event Schedule:

• 2:30-2:45pm: Arrivals and light refreshments
• 2:45-4:15pm: Main program
  • Welcome and overview - David Rolnick (Climate Change AI)
  • Talk: AI for Climate Action: Patterns, predictions and possibilities - Anna Koivuniemi (Google DeepMind)
  • Project presentations from CCAI Innovation Grantees
    • Detecting Flooding in Fiji’s Croplands - John Duncan (University of Western Australia)
    • Mitigating Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity via Machine Learning Powered Assessment - Scott Loarie (iNaturalist)
    • From Observing Power to Improving Power: Loss Localization in the Distribution Grid through Topology - June Lukuyu (University of Washington)
  • Talk: Addressing gaps in data, capacity, and coordination - Priya Donti (Climate Change AI)
  • Panel discussion: How can we foster collaboration and enable on-the-ground impact? - Peter Battaglia (Google DeepMind), John Duncan (University of Western Australia), Scott Loarie (iNaturalist), Genevieve Flaspohler (Rhiza Research), Priya Donti (Climate Change AI), Uyi Stewart (data.org)
• 4:15-5pm: Networking with light refreshments

Organizers: Climate Change AI, Google DeepMind

Building a Global Community in AI for Climate: Stocktake and Vision for the Next 5 Years

Tuesday, September 24, 2024 from 10:00-13:30 (US Eastern Time) - Elsie Rooftop (1412 Broadway, New York, NY 10018)

The space of AI for climate action has transformed significantly over the past five years, gaining significant momentum across the public and private sectors, as well as being shaped in multi-faceted ways by recent developments in AI. This evolving landscape calls for a reassessment of needs to advance the AI-for-climate space in a scalable, responsible, equitable, democratized, and sound manner. To this end, this invite-only event will convene researchers, practitioners, funders, and decision-makers to take stock of the current state of the field, pinpoint opportunities and gaps, and forge collaborations in service of better advancing the space, through a combination of plenary content and breakout discussions. In particular, this event will invite in-depth discussion on ways to further democratize and advance the AI-for-climate space by addressing critical gaps in expertise, education, coordination, and infrastructure.

Event Schedule:

• 10-10:30am: Arrivals and light refreshments
• 10:30-11am: Talk: Overview and current state of the AI-for-climate landscape - David Rolnick (Climate Change AI)
• 11-11:30am: Project presentations from CCAI Innovation Grantees
  • The CityLearn Challenge 2023 - Kingsley Nweye (University of Texas at Austin)
  • Accelerating Material Discovery for High-Performance Chemical Separation using AI - Subhransu Maji (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
  • Using Machine Learning and Earth Observation Data to Identify Aquaculture Sites with High Potential for Production Intensification and Mangrove Restoration in Southeast Asia - Joshua Cortez (Thinking Machines Data Science), Shannon Hood (Conservation International)
  • ForestBench: Equitable Benchmarks for Monitoring Verification and Reporting of Nature-Based Solutions with Machine Learning - Björn Lütjens (MIT)
• 11:30am-12:30pm: Breakout discussions on opportunities, challenges, and paths forward in the AI and climate space
  • Breakout topics: Capacity-building and coordination, education, entrepreneurship, equity, infrastructure, research-to-deployment, and thought leadership
• 12:30-1:30pm: Lunch and networking

Organizer: Climate Change AI

Tech Together: Towards a Global Network for Public Interest Technology

Tuesday, September 24, 2024 from 10:00-16:00 (US Eastern Time) - Verizon Center at Cornell Tech (2 W Loop Rd, New York, NY 10044)

A high-level gathering on behalf of the Public Interest Tech Fund to catalyze a global movement around financing and investment in public interest technology. [Event recap.]

Organizers: Siegel Family Endowment, Ford Foundation, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Pivotal Ventures

AI: Climate Hero or Villain?

Wednesday, September 25, 2024 from 18:00-19:30 (US Eastern Time) - Newsweek (Floor 72, One World Trade Center, 285 Fulton St, New York, NY 10007) and via livestream

Artificial Intelligence promises to revolutionize many aspects of clean tech and climate science, offering powerful ways to bring down emissions and adapt to climate impacts. However, AI is also an enormous energy consumer due to the massive computing power needed at data centers to train and operate generative AI systems. Energy analysts warn of a coming surge in electricity and water demand at data centers due largely to AI’s growth. This panel of experts from AI, technology and electric companies will discuss how we can reap the climate benefits of AI without having its power demands derail the clean energy transition. [Event recap.]

Panelists: Suzanne DiBianca (Salesforce), Priya Donti (MIT, Climate Change AI), Bobby Hollis (Microsoft), Amen Ra Mashariki (Bezos Earth Fund), Heather Quinley (Duke Energy)

Moderator: Jeff Young (Newsweek)

Organizer: Newsweek