As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so too does the hope that artificially intelligent technologies will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change. Technology giants, international think-tanks and policy-makers appear increasingly keen to advance agendas that contribute to “AI for Good” or “AI for the Planet”.

Dark Machines explores why the idea that the converging forces of a growing planetary crisis and technological change through artificial intelligence will act synergistically to the benefit of people and the planet, is naïve and dangerous. It explores why AI and automation may lead to the accelerated deterioration of the biosphere, automated inequality, and augmented diffusion of misinformation, while simultaneously amplifying risks for people and the planet.

We face a profound challenge. We can either allow AI accelerate the loss of resilience of people and our planet. Or we can decide to act forcefully in ways that redirects its capabilities towards resilient, sustainable, and just futures.

Victor Galaz is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University), and Program Director at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). Victor Galaz is also the author of the book Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics - The Anthropocene Gap (Edward Elgar, 2015), editor for Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity - Applications and Frontiers (Edward Elgar, 2019), and co-founder of the Biosphere Code – a manifesto for algorithms in the environment (2015).