AI for the Sustainable Development Goals

What is artificial intelligence? What are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? How does AI affect the SDGs?

Artificial Intelligence has a real impact on our lives and on our environment, and the Sustainable Development Goals enable us to evaluate these impacts in a systematic manner. This book shows that doing so requires us to understand the context of AI – the infrastructure it is built on, who develops it, who owns it, who has access to it, who uses it, and what it is used for – rather than relying on an isolationist theory of technology. By doing so, we can analyze not only the direct effects of AI on sustainability, but also the indirect – or second-order – effects. AI for the Sustainable Development Goals shows how AI potentially affects all SDGs – both positively and negatively.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 AI and the SDGs in Context

3 The Challenge of Evaluating AI Impact

4 Sustainable Economic Development

5 Sustainable Social Development

6 Sustainable Environmental Development

7 Assessing the Overall Impact of AI

8 Conclusion

About the Author

Henrik Skaug Saetra is a political scientist working in the Faculty of Business, Languages and Social Science at Østfold University College. Sætra has a particular interest in political theory and philosophy and worked extensively with Thomas Hobbes and social contract theory, environmental ethics and game theory. At the moment Sætra mostly works with issues involving the dynamics between human individuals, society and technology.