This handout picture collected by a satellite of © 2019 Planet Labs, Inc on August 20, 2019 shows smoke and fires in Brazil’s state Para.

80 Days of Artificial Intelligence

Writing about AI while the Amazon is burning

9 min readAug 24, 2019

Most people ask me why I write about artificial intelligence and others are just more interested in how. However I had a long article on the subject that was deleted by Medium, perhaps due to the vast amount of links at the end linking to all my 80 articles so far, so maybe you will never know?

Article deleted and Amazon burning at the same time

No, I will of course do my best to write this article again.

Amazon or Amazon Inc?

The Amazon forest burning is no joke. It is one of the worst catastrophes of our time. The Brazilian president can be partly blamed, as well as corporate interest and consumers who eat meat. However no matter the blame the status is that a devastating blow has been struck to nature and one of the lungs of earth that delivers breathable air to all human beings. As such humanity’s chances of survival are diminishing.

Retrieved from The Guardian on the 24th of August

So why not write about #500daysofClimateCrisis?

I think working towards a cleaner planet is generational – it will be something we will be working towards for the rest of our lives regardless of what topic we choose to focus on.

Additionally having worked with sustainability and climate for several years in a nonprofit prior to starting this project – and much of the focus on sustainability permeates my writing.

At the current time when I search for Amazon this is my top result:

Screenshot by author on the 24th of August

It would be fair to argue that this is not related to artificial intelligence and perhaps simply big technology companies, however Google, Amazon and Facebook is not sufficiently prioritising the climate crisis. Ad revenue has a clear priority over the climate crisis, some would argue it is not relevant to these actors to care, however I would argue it is a nonpartisan issue. All people and companies are being affected by a worsening of the global climate as well as growing inequality. Broadly it is in our best interest to take action.

There are massive investments in ‘artificial intelligence’ and an increasing focus in terms of search patterns.

Screenshot by author taken on the 24th of August

I do not know if this is of any consolation, however if we quantify then ‘love’ has a much higher search ranking than any of these terms.

Then again ‘sustainability’ or the ‘climate crisis’ receives far less attention. We have to be sceptical of ‘ai’ of course since it may be used for other purposes than an abbreviation for artificial intelligence.

Then again we can quantify and I do find this interesting, again another graphic from The Guardian may be illustrative of the Amazon disappearing:

One of my main reasons for learning more about artificial intelligence was however to learn why people find it so important. My field anthropology is the scientific study of humans and human behaviour and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, social anthropologists seek to understand how people live in societies and how they make their lives meaningful.

Yet it can be said to be a critical field to used to discover discrepancies from theories or quantitative surveys — of how lives actually are impacted by changes or lack of change. I believe this to be the case in relation to the impact or developments in the field of artificial intelligence.

If I were to formulate it clearly I would say my current mission is:

Making artificial intelligence work for our shared ecology

Attempting to understand is part of this process. The community working with artificial intelligence may be important to understand possibilities or failures to attempt reaching a higher degree of sustainability and reducing global emissions.

Artificial intelligence is not the answer, yet can contribute to a house on fire. The question I am attempting to answer is whether this contribution will be water to extinguish the fire or gasoline leading to further adverse decisions.

My 80 articles so far

This is a summary article to help those who follow my writing to navigate in my articles so far. I can certainly do more to summarise my thoughts, and I will be working on a book release this autumn that could be more helpful than a set of links. In the meantime here is a link to all 80 of my articles so far.

First 50 days — general approach.
From day 50–80: a focus on AI safety.

Word count: 119,257.

1. Defining AI — #500daysofAI:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/500-days-of-artificial-intelligence-1-191cb486921b?source=friends_link&sk=887e8744ed51e477458ae60d2859dbad

2. An Essay On Applied Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Cities:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/an-essay-on-applied-artificial-intelligence-and-sustainable-cities-463fae866d77?source=friends_link&sk=23a53c2db129bdda4f243bd1cee9188a

3. Some Current Issues In Funding of Artificial Intelligence:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/some-current-issues-in-funding-of-ethical-artificial-intelligence-a7be9ca1a178?source=friends_link&sk=70ba1570388643fc8334f305d4ebd706

4. Patents In The Field of Artificial Intelligence:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/patents-in-the-field-of-artificial-intelligence-2019-52db9b03abe6?source=friends_link&sk=effdefe9c85481794fedad27d053990e

5. AI for Good and AI for Bad — published in The Startup:
https://medium.com/swlh/ai-for-good-and-ai-for-bad-71627e3d7849?source=friends_link&sk=7ed4065fd7913db8b71354f3480f2b25

6. AI Governance in Argentina and Uruguay:
https://medium.com/swlh/ai-governance-in-argentina-and-uruguay-aeb68417db93?source=friends_link&sk=d352d3f641fcafc9b45649a9035cf15b

7. Three Writers In The Field of AI:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/three-writers-in-the-field-of-ai-44f14c0e3402?source=friends_link&sk=3610e4980c85f65d70e791d5af082248

8. Scandinavian AI Strategies 2019 — published In Becoming Human:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/scandinavian-ai-strategies-2019-16ecec9f17dc?source=friends_link&sk=46ecb92fa21edd4a3268037c7fd7b926

9. Social Scientists and AI — published in AI Social Research:
https://medium.com/ai-social-research/social-scientists-and-ai-1d9d97a5246?source=friends_link&sk=fb29f5178e3c4b34b7ec56082bfc3e47

10. 10 reflections on AI:
https://medium.com/@alexmoltzau/10-thoughts-on-artificial-intelligence-e94c6c533270?source=friends_link&sk=1d9868554318868dce78d1d7e973e58c