UK Research and Innovation has awarded £117 million to academic institutions and training centers in the country to implement artificial intelligence applications especially related to carbon emissions and renewable energy.
Perhaps there are no other bodies than academic available to perform this task. Or, maybe the recipients have created the platform. UKRI is a government agency of sorts whose goal is to finance important research efforts. In this particular instance some questions arise.
Being that CO2 has been widely identified as the root problem of climate change, why is further research on the subject and its alleviation even necessary? Practical solutions, wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen production, etc. are currently being adopted. Or have climate scientists been in error? Such has been the case in the past. Are there other possible causes as yet undiscovered? If there were, how would AI determine this? Is AI capable of truly original "thinking"?
Suppose that these AI investigations indicate that CO2 doesn't have any significant effect on world climate. What then? Or, on the basis of current thinking, isn't it likely that AI will sift through all internet traffic and reach that conclusion as well? Does AI operate as a sort of democratic science vote counter? Wouldn't it reject a correct hypotheses if it was only embraced by a few?
Will AI search into the economic aspects of a replacement of fossil fuels with renewables? Or will a potential disaster far into the future outweigh one that may or may not occur a generation ahead? Would AI be able to figure out the risk-reward ratio of continuing the use, at least for now, of fossil fuels vs. renewables?
The best future use of AI in Britain might be to retrieve England's reputation in cricket as their national team has been eliminated in the 2023 Cricket World Cup after going 1-6 in the preliminary rounds.
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