Can AI help to create sustainability solutions?

How artificial intelligence is developed and deployed will determine whether it advances or undermines sustainability.

On the one hand, the global race for AI capacity will require the construction of large energy-intensive data centres that draw heavily on electricity, water and other finite resources to sustain their continuous operations.

On the other, there are high hopes that one day AI will help us make the right calculations to defeat climate change.

But what does AI itself think about sustainability? We like to imagine a world where AI sits alongside us, grappling with the challenges of sustainability and helping to identify solutions.

For all the hype, a key question remains. Can AI ‘grasp’ the complexities of sustainability, and be trusted to make suggestions that truly reflect human values and perspectives?

Unfortunately, the answer is: no, not yet. But that is not entirely AI’s fault.

Humans are partly to blame, as I discovered during my research with Lutz Preuss of Kedge Business School in France, Priyanka Chaparia at the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) in Noida in India, and Bimal Arora, Director of the Centre for Responsible Business (CRB).

What does sustainability include?

The problem is the diverging perspectives on sustainability held by different groups of people.

Most people agree that it is the ‘grand challenge’ of our age. However, no-one can quite agree on what sustainability actually is.

Drawing on our research, we compared the sustainability priorities among stakeholders in India with those expressed by generative AI. Our findings were published in the IT Now magazine of the Chartered Institute for IT.

Stakeholders from the private and public sectors, NGOs, and education participated in the survey to rank 23 sustainability concepts. These ranged from the interconnection of environmental, economic, and social issues to sustainability indicators.

We then used the same questions as prompts for four prominent GenAI ChatBots: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude.

Among the ‘human participants’ in the business sector, we found that climate change, gender equality, and education were top priorities. However, concerns in the public sector were mainly about water and healthy ecosystems, though climate change was also seen as an important consideration.

By highlighting climate change as the most pressing issue, there was a degree of alignment between business stakeholders and the rankings by Copilot and Claude, as well as between the public sector and Gemini. 

But there were also divergent perspectives with, ChatGPT, for example, identifying the interconnection of environmental, economic and social issues as a concern for the private sector; and none of the chatbots, except for Gemini, seeing climate change as an important matter for the public sector.

Can AI reason like a person?

In contrast, people working for NGOs, expressed very distinct priorities, focusing on healthy ecosystems, environmental interconnection, gender equality, and consumption. While each of the chatbots, excluding Gemini, identified one of these priorities, their rankings were inconsistent.

These discrepancies underscore the necessity for further refinement when training AI.  

But fully replicating human reasoning on sustainability may remain elusive while human perspectives on the problem continue to differ.  

In another paper, published in the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, my colleagues and I reviewed the framing of sustainability by different stakeholders in India.

What we found was a clear distinction between the interpretation of sustainability compared with that of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

It became apparent in our study that Indian stakeholders believe that the corporate sector should focus on environmental issues as their sustainability agenda, while CSR activities, framed as synonymous with social welfare programmes, should be the responsibility of the government.

Due to Indian legislation, the way CSR encroaches on the corporate sector in India is still largely confined to philanthropy. This is different to the Western concept of CSR, which includes stakeholder pressure, environmental concerns and integration into the core business.

In follow-up research, we observed that most operators on the Indian scene tended to ‘stick to their own lane’: businesses focused on environmental issues, while governments and NGOs addressed social issues.

Only a few stakeholders, predominantly NGOs, emphasised the interconnections between CSR and sustainability, arguing for more systemic and integrated approaches to sustainability challenges.

Perhaps this might justify a shift away from a globally dominant understanding of the term ‘sustainability’ – driven by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals – to more culturally relevant ones.

All in all, our research shows that the cognitive maps with which different stakeholder groups approach the concept of sustainability tend to be linear and self-contained rather than interconnected.

Can AI and humans work together?

My own view is that we need to take a more holistic, integrated approach, holding the bias where sustainability is predominantly associated with environmental concerns in check, and encouraging businesses to integrate social inclusivity and belonging into their sustainability strategies, promoting goals such as educational opportunities for all and workplace equality.

After all, companies that integrate environmental and social sustainability are likely to experience enhanced brand reputation, customer loyalty and operational efficiencies.

Whether AI can capture this nuance remains to be seen. While GenAI tools are good at replicating patterns to generate text, fully replicating human reasoning is a different ball game.

But, going forward, AI might be further refined to align more closely with diverse human values and priorities. In research at Warwick Business School, we have found that the use of an AI-driven essay feedback tool can have a levelling effect for disadvantaged students who do not have the same support network as more privileged students.  

As AI collaborates further with human wisdom, it does have the potential to steer us towards a more sustainable future.

Further reading:

How will AI affect equality and inclusion?

COP30: Can business save the planet again?

Regulating AI use could combat its rampant demand

Working on the jagged frontier: How companies should use generative AI

Isabel Fischer is Professor of Responsible Digital Innovation and Educations at Warwick Business School. She teaches in the area of Digital Transformation, Design Thinking for Digital Innovation, Consulting, Creating Digital Futures, and Creating Digital Communities. Isabel's research portfolio centres on AI, Ethics, and Environmental & Social Sustainability.

For more articles on AI and Sustainability sign up to our Core Insights newsletter.