Humanity has been rocked this year by news of two potential science-inflected catastrophes: one evoking Everest levels of hype, the other mostly ignored though it’s likely the more critical problem. In the first instance I refer to ChatGPT and its ever-morphing cousins. No one who hasn’t been living under a rock can have escaped the tsunami of AI hubris and hand-wringing since the release of the famous chatbot a year ago.
Last week when OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, held their first-ever ‘developers conference’ to introduce the possibilities of personalized AI assistants or ‘agents,’ the press went into overdrive. In The New York Times, Kevin Roose opined: “If OpenAI is right, we may be transitioning to a world in which A.I.s are less our creative partners than silicon-based extensions of us — artificial satellite brains that can move throughout the world, gathering information and taking actions on our behalf.”
Facebook’s chief AI scientist Jann LeCun has declared: “There is a future in which every one of our interactions with the digital world will be mediated by an AI assistant … Imagine that future where you are from Indonesia or Senegal or France and your entire digital diet is mediated through an AI system.” [See YouTube video here at 50:30mins]
Meanwhile in the present tense, Nature reports that over the past 12 months a quarter of the world’s population has experienced “dangerous levels of extreme heat.” 156 cities with at least a million people faced “five or more consecutive days of extreme heat” with the list topped by Houston (at 22 days), New Orleans (at 17), and Jakarta and Tangerang – both in Indonesia – also at 17 days. It adds up to total of 1.9 billion people exposed.
Where LeCun projects a Pollyanna-ish future for the citizens of Indonesia, the world’s 4th largest country, its 279 million inhabitants are already facing levels of bodily disruption one climate scientist describes as “a massive violation of the really basic human rights of the vast majority of the planet.”
Earth is undergoing the hottest temperatures for 125,000 years with average global temperature now 1.32˚ above the preindustrial baseline. And with an El Nino just getting underway in the Pacific Ocean, next year is projected to be warmer still. According to Nature predictions are for around 1.43˚ above baseline, dangerously close to the 1.5˚ many scientists believe will be some sort of tipping point, pushing climate systems into chaos. But hey, let’s hear more about GPT-4 Turbo.
In my view the most important science story of 2023 is not AI but the many ways climate change is pushing ocean systems into chaos and decay.
I’m not opposed to the potential of AI systems. Like many digital technologies AI will no doubt enable applications we’ll one day wonder how we ever lived without. I can remember life as a journalist before the advent of word processors (back in the pre-internet dark ages), and I never want to go back there. The cut-and-paste function changed the nature of writing in a radically productive way. At the same time, word processors and other evolutions in digital publishing have led to an environment so awash in words many of us have a sense of literaryly drowning. Substack is a manifestation of this tension. On the one hand it’s a spectacular advance in democracy that so many people can have their own publication. On the other hand, who has time to read it? I’m aware of the irony I’m performing here.
I bet AI will also have some democratizing effects. I also bet it won’t change the status quo among human beings any more than the internet has. Will the world be a better place when we are all generals at the head of our own bot armies? If the last 30 years have taught us anything it’s that digital tech is ushering in a new feudal age.
But global warming is changing the fundamentals of life on Earth. And not just for humans. In my view the most important science story of 2023 is not AI but the many ways climate change is pushing ocean systems into chaos and decay. The potential disruption for humans will, I believe, eclipse any fallout we are may face from AI in the coming decades.
“The science clearly shows we have less than 10 years left to act for coral reefs on our planet” – Great Barrier Reef Foundation
The fastest warming place on Earth is now the North Barents Sea, with the Artic region showing temperatures rising at 2.7˚C per decade – three time faster than average. Seasoned climate scientists have called this “simply shocking.” Of special concern is the faster-than-expected loss of Arctic sea ice, which reflects away sunlight. The more ice is lost, the less reflection and hence the more heat accumulates in the ocean forming a toxic “feedback loop.”
The Antarctic situation is grimmer. A study published in October about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shows it disappearing much faster than scientists thought. Lead author Kaitlin Naughten, an ocean modeler at the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN: “It appears that we may have lost control of the West Antarctic ice melting.” 12 trillion tons of Antarctic sheet-ice have been lost since 1997, double previous estimates. Even if we keep warming to less than 1.5˚ – which now seems a lost cause – the WAIS could still collapse, raising sea levels by many meters.
Evidence also suggests that ocean currents are slowing down, notably the AMOC (Atlantic Meridinol Overturning Circulation) “a system of currents that has an essential role in earth’s climate” by transporting water between the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
And at just the moment we might want to think about preserving our oceans comes news that corporations are racing to start mining in the deep sea, in part because deep sea-beds hold a wealth of minerals necessary for electric vehicle batteries. Trillions of “potato-sized polymetallic nodules” which form over millions of years, contain nickel, manganese, copper, zinc and cobalt. Elon Musk and other EV makers yearn to get their hands on them. Due to an obscure clause in the United Nations Law of the Sea (UCLOS), deep sea mining permits could be issued for the first time on July 9, 2023. Dozens already have been granted to private companies. The Guardian calls it “the biggest gold-rush in history.” This in an area covering 54% of the world’s oceans, which UCLOS itself calls “the common heritage of mankind.”
‘Mining’ the mineral-rich nodules involves hoovering up the top layer of the ocean floor with a giant suction tube, separating them from the mud and all the critters living in it, then dumping the effluent back. Marine biologists are alarmed.
If there’s still time to protect deep sea creatures, the prospects for coral reefs are not so good. An El Nino event has officially begun in the Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation notes this is coming on top of “seven mass bleaching events between 1998 and 2022.” The Foundation’s blunt assessment: “The science clearly shows we have less than 10 years left to act for coral reefs on our planet.”
Less than ten years to save the habitats supporting a quarter of all marine life. Let that sink in next time you read about AI-LLM’s.
I care deeply about the Great Barrier Reef because I grew up in its home-state of Queensland. In part to respond to the crisis it’s enduring I started an artistic project (with my twin-sister Christine) called the Crochet Coral Reef, to emulate in yarn our world’s most majestic marine marvel. Ours is a sculptural, craft-based endeavor that’s now the largest art+science project on the planet, with nearly 25,000 participants in 52 cities and countries. I’ll be writing about it in my next post. On the night my sister and I began, in December 2005, we joked to ourselves that if the Great Barrier Reef ever disappeared our wooly reef might be something to remember it by. This sentiment is no longer a jest.
Our oceans – the cradle of life – are in severe trouble. They need our attention. AI-generated “satellite brains” won’t get us out of this mess and may well prove another costly distraction.
*
I’ve been been absent from Substack for a while because I’ve been working on a new exhibition of our Crochet Coral Reef at Schlossmuseum Linz, Austria. In my next post I’ll report more. I’m also beginning a new book on the subject of “dimension”. What does this term mean in, and for, mathematics, physics, data-science, art and culture. And what is its relationship to AI and big-data technologies?
Margaret, thanks for this. I've been experiencing the same cognitive dissonance lately because of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The hype over AI and other science stuff seems almost dangerously beside the point, the equivalent of fiddling as the ship goes down.