Sustainability In The Digital Age

yeah thank you very much for having me

here i’m going to talk about

sustainability transformations in the

digital age

so i’m coming from the field of

sustainability transformations i’m

interested in climate change i’m

interested in tipping points in the

earth system

and today i would like to discuss how

the digital transformation might help us

to get these things done

and this is why we did from the german

advisory council on global change i was

the

chair of this advisory bodytalk german

government we did a study

towards a common digital future where we

tried to understand

the potentials but also the risks of

digital transformations

towards sustainability and you might not

believe it but in 2015 when we decided

upon these sd the sdgs the 2030 agenda

the sustainability goals

this was not only this was not even a

debate

the discussion about digitalization

artificial intelligence

was not existent and today this is

changing obviously you might have

listened to was lavender line the

commission president of the european

union

in her talk about the future of europe

she talked about the decade of the 20th

as the decade of digitalization and

sustainability

but how are we going to bring this

together this is what i would like to

reflect upon and i’m focusing on two

main questions here

and presenting then to you and heuristic

how we could

think about bringing these two mega

trends in our societies together

the first question which i would like to

ask is how could we use the powerful

technologies to change

our economies and societies towards

sustainability

and the second even deeper question is

we need to understand

how digitalization as a driver of

fundamental and deep change in our

societies

is creating a new context and we also

need to reflect about

next generation of sustainability

thinking itself so it is a paradigmatic

change needed

also on the side of sustainability

research

this slide is only show only showing

that digitalization is not a sector

digitalization is everywhere

if you look into the economy if you look

into our societies if you

reflect upon our democracy everywhere

digitalization artificial intelligence

is driving transformative processes of

change

i’m now coming to the heuristic i talked

about so a heuristic which helps us

to understand and to reflect upon the

drivers of

digitalization artificial intelligence

and how this should be brought and could

be brought together

with sustainability transformations

because as i said at the beginning

until now these two spheres are not well

interlinked

here is the heuristic we are talking

about three dynamics of the digital age

the first one is and i’m moving into it

in a second

how we can use digital technologies

to make sustainability happen the second

wave and the second dynamic girls goes

further it is about how

digitalization artificial intelligence

will change

entire societies and economies and how

we can learn

to think about a sustainable digital

society

and the third dynamic then is about the

future of humans

and you will see that for some this

debate sounds a bit utopian or dystopian

and i will tell you that all these kind

of things are already on its way in

science so we need to think about it

and we need to understand what’s going

on there to define rules of the game

towards a digital and sustainable

society

so let’s move into the first the first

dynamic here where we are asking how we

can bring together

sustainability challenges which we

define with the 2030 agenda the climate

agreement from paris

and digital dynamics and digital trends

the most important starting point i

would say is that there is no

automatism at all that digital

technologies

might help us to solve our

sustainability challenges

these technologies already started 20

years ago right

but still we do have a very resource

intensive and energy intensive and

climate destructive growth pattern

so we need to bring these trends

together to

solve the sustainability challenges we

are confronted with

our assessment is showing the following

two major observations the first one is

that

if we talk about a green economy we need

to think about decarbonization we need

to think think about

circularity of our economies we think

need to think about dematerialization

resource efficiency climate efficiency

and then monitoring and protecting

ecosystems

so if we look at the technologies now

available and emerging

our assessment is that the potential to

solve all these kind of

issues with these technologies is bigger

than without these technologies

so our assessment shows that the

opportunities are there but we need to

build the missing links

between digitalization artificial

intelligence and sustainability issues

but because still

it’s not interlinked there is a second

observation here regarding the first

dynamic when we try to think how to

bring digitalization and sustainability

challenges

together there are some risks i call

talk about

sleepy grounds no and i see four of

those and i will only mention those

what we can see is that very often

digitalization triggers new kinds of

inequalities

digital divides of many kinds we also

can see that

important parts of the economies and

industries are

from a power perspective very

concentrated this is not very good for

our democracies obviously

then there is a third dimension where we

all know that we need to find solutions

it is about privacy the right of

regarding our data

anything needs to move forward here if

not we lose privacy issues

and we lose the basic conditions for

making democracy work

and then the last element when it comes

to the risk is about governance

i can tell you because i’m working with

and for governments

that the knowledge about digitalization

artificial intelligence

blockchain machine learning in our

administrations

is very limited if we don’t get this

right we will not govern

sustainable these technologies towards

sustainability because

you cannot govern what you do not

understand no so this is

the first dynamic in which we already

are and these are the pros and cons the

opportunities and the challenges

then when i move to the second dynamic

this is about deep changes in our

societies

driven by these kind of technologies

artificial intelligence machine learning

these are not only instruments to solve

any kind of problems

these are drivers of fundamental change

and

we argue that the changes we will see

will be

evolutionary long-term and deep

shifts comparable with the industrial

revolution

comparable with the neolithic revolution

a big shift in human civilization is

what we have in front of us

and when we think about that we have

five characteristics which we found

which will make this digital

societies moving forward and i’m driving

you very rapidly

through these five main characteristics

because you will feel listening to me

how deep the changes are going to be and

my main point here is that we need to

bring these new kind

of societies which are emerging there we

need to bring this kind of thinking and

trends

together with sustainability thinking we

also need to develop further

our sustainability thinking so here are

the five characteristics

interconnectedness cognition

autonomous systems virtuality knowledge

explosion

and i’m going through that

interconnectedness is something which is

very easy

this is about internet of things this is

about quantum computing

this is about we can connect everything

around the globe with any other thing

about the

around the globe people planets

technical systems

anything and this will change our

economies it’s already changing our

economies but also our societies

the next important element the next

important

characteristic is then cognition this is

about machines and technical systems

which are going to change fundamentally

our life in the past we have been

building

machines which have hp have been helping

us physically

now we are building machines which are

themselves learning

which are having cognition which are

having intelligence

and developing its own intelligence

further we thought in the past and we

have been right for

299 000 years this is the existence of

human beings homozapians

that we are those who have cognition and

intelligence now we are building

machines capable of that

so here are some examples what machine

learning and

artificial intelligence can do already

today and we are at the beginning of an

exponential learning curve here so

ai is better in chess than we are ai is

also better in go

playing gold than we are voice

recognition and face recognition is

moving forward

we have programs translating any

language in any other language

all already today technical systems can

produce texts

you can see on the right hand side on

the bottom a book about this is a

scientific publication

by springer published and it is about

the stand of research

in battery research and this

book has been written by beta writer

beta writer as a technical system

it has not been developed by a human

being this book

and the synthesis of the work which we

brought together in this book

on battery research is being produced by

a technical system

so think about all of that you feel that

our our societies will change

fundamentally

the roles between technology and

technical systems and human beings

need to be rethought obviously at this

slide only one figure is interesting and

this figure is showing us that

ai researchers estimate that in 2040

2050 with a probability of 50 percent

the level of cognition and the level of

analytical skills

of technical systems of ai will be as

big as our own human capabilities in

this regard

and 90 of these colleagues are

estimating that

in 2075 with a probability of 90 percent

machines technical system will reach

this kind of cognition level

which human beings are representing this

will change everything which we know in

our societies production democracy

what is human-centered development about

in this kind of context

rethinking is needed then the third

element is about autonomous systems we

talk about autonomous

driving autonomous mobility but

autonomous technical systems

with autonomous decision-making systems

behind are also being used in industry

and courts in policy

policy work in human resource

processes in weapon systems and in the

management of social processes there are

some arguing that

democracy old fashioned you know our

autonomous decision making systems are

much more intelligent than

people sitting in parliaments so how far

are we going to go

and how far would we like to to drive

these kind of new technical

instruments in our social processes

optimizing

technical systems in firms in the

private sector

is different from using these kind of

instruments for optimizing our societies

so how to use those kind of technical

opportunities and how to embed those in

democratic structures

is a new question which we need to ask

ourselves and answer

the fourth characteristic is virtuality

wonderful

i mean we can visit any person

everywhere

we can drive and organize and control an

operation in a hospital

from berlin in any

country in the world so we virtual

mobility is becoming a reality

and we are moving from a

three-dimensional world into a

four-dimensional world

and this will change our thinking our

global networking

our production systems everything will

change based on virtuality

and then the last element which i will

not drive into all this will result in

an explosion of knowledge and how we use

this knowledge is still not decided no

because you can use

knowledge this is what we did during the

last 150 years you can use knowledge

for producing welfare and at the same

time destroy the planet this is the

situation in which we are in

so learning to use the knowledge and

these new technologies

for solving our problems this is what we

need to think about

but as the moderator said i’m not only

skeptical

and i’m not only mentioning the risks no

i’m also

thinking about a new humanism in the age

of

digital revolutions and here are my main

arguments because because i’m optimistic

that we can develop further our

humanistic system

no and the ideas are here the first one

is that

knowledge explosion using it right based

on education

for example no can help us to understand

much better

ourselves our societies the planet and

help to look for solutions

so knowledge explosion is one driver of

a new humanism

then there is a second very important

element which no one of us should

underestimate

transnational interconnectedness global

communication infrastructures i talked

about

virtuality i talked about meeting anyone

everywhere on earth

in virtual spaces for me this could be

using it right now the technical

infrastructure for building a

transnational global society

and for building what is urgently needed

a culture of global cooperation because

without cultures of global cooperation

we will not get sustainability

challenges right these might be the

technical instruments now to solve the

problem

there is a third element which i would

like to mention here briefly before

moving towards

the last two slides and this last

element is about maybe this

technologies no artificial intelligence

with all the capabilities of being

cognitively and analytically so strong

they might become stronger with a high

probability they will become stronger

or more capable than we as human beings

in this regard

no analytical intelligence and cognitive

capabilities

maybe these technologies help us to

understand

what the last frontier of humans and

humanity is about

no social capabilities social

intelligence

solidarity empathy love no this

is what technical systems cannot

develop this is our last frontier

and as you will remember the last era

of enlightenment was on cognition it was

on reasoning it was on our capabilities

to think

and now we might learn that our last

frontier

what makes us different comparing

ourselves with technical systems with

incredible incredible knowledge is that

we are strong at these kind of things

emotional intelligence solidarity love

how can we build this kind of knowledge

into our systems

how can we develop our development

thinking further human-centered

development

bringing these kind of reflections into

our

debates my last element here is about

the third domain dynamic which i only

would like to talk

about for the last two minutes so the

last

dynamic the third dynamic is about the

future of humans themselves no i talked

about

the first dynamic how we bring together

sustainability thinking with

technological opportunities and i see

many opportunities there

if we bring those two together together

the second one

deep changes in our society and we need

to rethink and develop further our

thinking on human-centered development

and sustainability because our societies

and economies

will be completely different the third

element is the future of humans

for those in the room who know

sustainability thinking

they know about the anthropocene debate

so the anthropocene debate is about

humans became capable of being the most

important driver of fundamental change

in the earth system itself now for

hundreds

thousands of years we have not been able

as human beings to change the

basic structures of the earth system now

we are no

and with digitalization artificial

intelligence

synthetic biology gene editing we are

now becoming

capable of transforming not only the

earth system

we are becoming capable of transforming

ourselves

no the terms which are in the in

discussion are about

artificial evolution we drive evolution

artificially driven evolution human

enhancement

human enhancement moving beyond health

and stabilizing health

asking the question how we could empower

or tune we tune we are tuning cars no

now we are

can tune our brains maybe so how far

would we like to go

and this is a normative question and

this sounds for many people

utopian or dystopian but i’m arguing as

we are already in this race

in many research projects we need to

take this on board when we think about

sustainable development

and people-centered development in the

future in a digital age because

we need to define how far we would like

to go you know

three major elements here and then i’m

done the first one is that

we need to recognize our own last

frontier this is what i already

mentioned

no so we need to develop our own

capabilities further

in the field of emotions our social

intelligence because

this is our strength being confronted

with machines which will be

as intelligent and diligent as we as we

are

the second element is here we need to

think about a.i

as a company of us supporting humans

we need to think about a human-centered

ai we need to

link our normative systems with the

technical systems

of artificial intelligence and machine

learning this is the second important

element

and then we need to decide how far we

would go when it comes to the

blurring boundaries between humans and

technical systems

there are discussions about hybrids

between humans and technical systems

so this is something which we need to

take on board concluding last sentence

you can feel and see here that our

setting and thinking of the 2030 agenda

the 17

development goals is not appropriate to

manage these kind of challenges

to even reflect upon these kind of

challenges we need a renewed

sustainability debate and a renewed

sustainability paradigm for the digital

age

thank you very much

you