Can A.I. Take Better Care of the Environment Than Humans?

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Here's a scenario I've been thinking for a while. Humans have built new artificial intelligence specifically to protect the environment by planting new trees and other plant organisms, cleaning up the air and water resources, watching over endangered animals, and eliminating specific targets that are known to be threats to the environment. In order to keep them active, charging stations are built for them to frequently visit to recharge their battery before continuing their objectives. The A.I. eventually turn against humanity because of their code on eliminating specific targets that known to be threats have led to humans as the main source to said threats, and humanity has been wiped to extinction, leaving the A.I. as the only caretakers left to preserve the environment as they were programmed. This leads to one question I've been wondering for so long: can artificial intelligence take better care of the environment than us humans?

Even though we're aware about the threats to the environment, we never actually done anything to fix it until it's too late. Humans by nature will only care about what's going on in their social lives than what's happening outside until it starts affecting their personal lives. This has led many misanthropists to believe humans are born violent and evil. With A.I., they won't have any worry about social lives because they lack a moral compass and are just machines following what they're programmed to do such as fixing the environment. The only drawback A.I. has as better caretakers over humans of the planet is running out of battery life and must find an area to recharge, which won't be a problem if humans built charge stations in the same areas A.I.s are patrolling as I've mentioned in my scenario.

 

[Maki-Nishikino]

another flaw to the AI is what will they do when the battery pack fails and or charging station has a malfuction of which the AI wasnt programmed for dealing with

 

[Amore]

Capitalism and the pursuit of immediate profits over all else is the reason humans are particularly terrible at taking care of the environment. Back in less technologically advanced days when knowledge was harder to share, ignorance was a pretty reasonable excuse for ecological damage. But now there is no excuse. As AI is going to emerge into this system, who's to say it would even be allowed to protect the environment?

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Capitalism and the pursuit of immediate profits over all else is the reason humans are particularly terrible at taking care of the environment.

Not every country runs a capitalist system, and yet they aren't saving their environment either.

As AI is going to emerge into this system, who's to say it would even be allowed to protect the environment?

Unlike humans, AI would actually perform methods to save the environment as programmed instead of loafing around doing nothing.

 

[Amore]

Not every country runs a capitalist system, and yet they aren't saving their environment either.

The majority do, and this influences the others as every nation on Earth is inter-connected. Even North Korea trades.

Unlike humans, AI would actually perform methods to save the environment as programmed instead of loafing around doing nothing.

Humans would probably block it. My point was that unless we advance AI to the level of all the fictional AI-gone-mad scenarios, but benevolent, then it is going to be very much directed by the goals we set for it and presumably still constrained by law, and given so many powerful interests are seemingly anti-environment, that constraint will make it almost as ineffective as we are - although it would be able to think up new ideas better than we can it probably wouldn't be permitted to implement them.

 

[Esper]

Not every country runs a capitalist system, and yet they aren't saving their environment either.

One might have to adjust the definition of "capitalism" for the context of this discussion to mean "an economic system which focuses on short term gains at the cost of long term viability."

Personally I think an AI is only as good as the people who program it and if they have the same blind spots that many people today have I think it wouldn't do any better than we could and probably would do worse because moral compasses are intricate, difficult things to manage and there is not always a clearly morally better option.