AI Weekly: Machine learning's role in climate change

Climate change is the most existential threat humanity faces today, and AI can solve problems in unprecedented ways. It only makes sense that we use the latter to work on the former. That was a significant sub-theme of NeurIPS 2019, highlighted in particular by the Tackling Climate Change workshop, and talk from some prominent leaders in machine learning suggests that the ML field can and should focus on it. There are two thrusts: One is about urging machine learning practitioners to use their research to work on solving climate change problems. The other is about ensuring that performing the research itself doesn't ironically contribute to climate change.