AI and the Climate
Sometimes now when it rains I wonder: are we entering a time when a forecast will bring anything but worry? As the summer storms threaten without resolution for days; as wildfire smoke clings and swings to our region and then the next; I wonder will the weather report go from being a banal thing to discuss, to the most critical. I have held this thought for fifteen years. Lately, it seems to be less of a wonder, and more of a truth.
AI, Backpacks and other tools we want to take for granted come to mind.
When we talk about the newest technologies, we need to consider their ability to help us survive our new climate. Our habitat of temperatures and essential features make our planet unique. We are evolved inside that climate. So when we talk about survival of a changed climate, we are talking about every type of climate nested inside the one of planetary features and their self-regulation. It’s this entirety of climate that makes the new tools we currently consider overpowering into exactly what we need for our impending future. It’s for this reason of nested climates that we can consider AI as part of our “Go-bag.”
In 2022, the UNHCR announced that we had surpassed the 100 million mark for total displacement, meaning that over 1.2% of the global population have been forced to leave their homes. Among these people are over 32.5 million refugees.
When we talk about containers for filling ourselves with resources we have to consider that AI, games, social platforms, are all very new, and silly right now but they might not be for long. Our environmental complexity is not separate from our upheavals. Our environmental shifts are involved everything we think is separate. It’s not a stretch to imagine that the impending displacement of our human population will join technology at the horizon. This horizon is a new age and is defined first by the planet’s winds, and then by ours.
We are nested within the planet.
It’s from this evolving synthesis, between humans and environment that the technologies of today matter.
Today we face a refugee crisis that points to a day in the future where many of us will actually be climate refugees if no other kind. Depending on circumstances we may find ourselves displaced for a few hours or days or for many weeks and years. Some of this displacement is due to political regimes and oligarchal power grabs, to pollution and very tangibly decided human events, yet some are part of our historical accumulation. Our story of now has lots of history behind it.
This is why the backpack makes sense as the carrier of choice in this evolving Carrier Bag Theory of AI: because it is the hallmark of today’s travelers, adventurers and yes, its ever growing population of migrants. A backpack is big enough to store mementos, papers, to carry water. A backpack can be waterproof, store portable power, and it can be extended with clips so that bedding and even tents can be carried on a mobile person’s back. A backpack can carry tools while hands grab the wheel, or grab a child to carry.
Backpacks are a totem of modern urban life and they are a tool that might easily be carried into the next phase of humanity. Handbags are for events. Baskets are not easy to carry according to our ways. Backpacks are what we need for evacuation, movement, for survival. Backpacks are familiar school sacks turned serious for a time when all of humanity is going back to some kind of “school” perhaps one of “Climate hard-knocks.”
Much like each individual child starts to learn the world through play, it seems that society first takes tools and explores their value in playful ways. When we think of children’s cartoon characters, when we think of Dora the Explorer or any other animated world of the last few decades; the backpack does feature in a way that no other container does. The backpack becomes a totem of liminality, of grasping at what was and putting it into relationship with what is to come.
In the world of viral subcultures, of raves and street art, in the world of activists and the recently displaced; the backpack has played a part. Style, pre-Internet and post, all feature this pack that integrates into the body in a way that no other does. As we enter the liminal space of transition, from the climate we knew to the patterns we’re getting as a result of our industrialization, the need for tools that match their times is as real as anything else in our lives.
I think about this now as the rain from last night clears into another cloud-filled day. I realize that no longer can I rely on my weather app. I can use its radar, but I can’t stand to trust its predictions. If I wait for the storm and the clearing the app predicts I miss precious time living. I need to exercise. I need to walk the dog. I need to prepare for the flooding it promises but so far, luckily, is not delivering. I play with scenarios and with tools in each, knowing my play is maturing into a grasp, a preparedness, for an unpredictable habitat.
Climate change isn’t just happening, it is maturing. Our relationship to all our new technologies must mature along with our climate because all that we do is nested inside it. From digital nomads, to climate refugees, from jet setters to wanderers in search of safety, our AI is a tool for our future. Through these early days of GPT play and storytelling about “what if” we will arrive at “the days when…” The Anthropocene is here. The tools of the anthropocene are here, too. The distribution and management of these tools must be considered.
Stay tuned as we take our Iris AI and begin to build it into a garden of trust. It’s happening now in Discord and soon I will be able to tell you more.
Mariette Papic is the author of the 2016 book, The Digital Nomad Manifesto, a theory of culture and climate shift. She is the child of a former refugee.
