ERC特刊征稿|聚焦人工智能工具:它们在环境可持续性方面的潜力、挑战和缺点

特刊详情
客座编辑
- Magdalena Radulescu,罗马尼亚布加勒斯特国立理工大学
- Dervis Kirikkaleli,黎巴嫩美国大学
- Lanouar Charfeddine,卡塔尔大学
- Bilal Hussain,巴基斯坦费萨拉巴德大学政府学院
主题范围
This special issue examines the potential, challenges and drawbacks of AI tools on environmental sustainability, and how it relates to the broader concept of effective and inadequate policy planning for environmental sustainability.
Environmental sustainability is a critical and rapidly-growing concern that necessitates the collaboration of several scientific fields, including economics and technology. Because of the scale and complexity problem, sophisticated tools and approaches are required to understand, simulate, and forecast future climatic conditions (Biswas, 2023). Artificial intelligence (AI) tools, are a fast-developing group of natural language processing technologies that are profoundly revolutionizing different aspects of individuals, society, industry, and the environment. These technologies are also boosting the number of opportunities to society and businesses (Reichstein et al., 2019; Kadow et al., 2020; Dwivedi et al., 2023).
For practitioners and researchers, the disruptive potential of AI tools across all sectors is both exciting and worrisome. According to innovation expert and futurist Roy Amara, we tend to underestimate the significance of new technologies in the long run while overestimating their influence in the short run. The growing interest in AI among practitioners and scholars has led in a wide range of research issues being covered in large amounts of scholarly material published in leading research journals. According to a report published by Stanford University in 2022, the number of AI research collaborations between the China and United States has risen about four times since 2010. However, the research in the area of potential, challenges and drawbacks of AI tools on environmental sustainability is still in early stage and very limited. This call for papers will try to fill this research gap.
It has become a crucial matter to consider the role of AI tools in the environmental sustainability. It is reported that 97% of climate experts agree that human activities are the primary cause of global warming (Dhar, 2020). AI tools seems poised to play a dual role. On the one hand, AI tools have the potential to advance our knowledge of environmental sustainability and reduces the effects of the climate crisis, such as in developing low-emission infrastructure, smart grid design, and modelling climate change predictions. Also, these AI tools may be employed to help in environmental research in a number of ways, including, data analysis, model parameterization, scenario development, interpretation, and model assessment (Biswas, 2023). By accelerating enterprise knowledge acquisition, boosting enterprise R&D, and raising enterprise talent investment, AI tools may greatly advance the development of enterprise energy utilization technology. By enhancing technical efficiency, AI tools also reduces the energy intensity and promotes energy efficiency (Liu et al., 2022).
Moreover, AI tools may be utilized to enhance environmental conversations, assist the development of green projects, and give useful insights into climate change action measures (Agathokleous et al., 2023). For example, ChatGPT has been used to assist in the development of policies for decreasing carbon emissions in the transport industry. It may be used to replicate dialogues amongst experts in the subject, enabling them to explore alternative ideas and measures without having to meet in person. It may also be used to offer extensive information on the costs and benefits of various activities, assisting in the identification of the most successful climate change policies. It is playing an essential role in the global effort to minimize the effect of climate change by offering insights on measures for lowering carbon emissions, increasing public engagement on climate change, and assisting in the development of green technology (George et al., 2023; Zhu et al., 2023).
On the other hand, AI tools also have some drawbacks. It may be essential to use a lot of processing power while training an AI model, which uses a lot of energy. The usage of fossil fuels to produce this energy frequently increases greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the quality of AI tools depends on the data they are trained on, and biases in this data might result in biased decisions. For instance, an AI system could prioritize immediate financial gain above long-term environmental sustainability if it is programmed with data that favours economic development over environmental conservation. It’s critical to concentrate on creating and utilizing AI algorithms that are energy-efficient and have a minimal carbon footprint in order to reduce the possible negative environmental effect of AI tools (GRC insights, 2023). This is why we are interested to draw attention to the applications and the effect of advanced AI tools. Thus, we cordially invite original works, including conceptual, theoretical, empirical publications, and cases regarding any of the topics listed below.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- AI and environmental sustainability
- The environmental drawbacks of AI
- AI-based climate solutions and their potential impacts
- Potential benefits and drawbacks of AI tools and environmental sustainability
- AI tools in the context of carbon neutrality
- AI literacy and environmental sustainability
- Potential Challenges in Implementing AI Tools and environmental Sustainability
- AI and ICT toward sustainable development
- Best practices for leveraging AI Tools for increased environmental sustainability
- AI, digitization, and environmental sustainability
- AI tools in energy transition and environmental sustainability
- Role of government and private sector in promoting AI Tools for environmental sustainability
投稿流程
特刊文章与ERC期刊常规文章遵循相同的审稿流程和内容标准,并采用同样的投稿模式。
有关准备文章及投稿的详细信息,可以参阅IOPscience页面的作者指南。
作者可登入期刊主页进行在线投稿,先选择“文章类型”,然后在“选择特刊”的下拉框中选择“Focus on AI Tools: Their Potential, Challenges and Drawbacks on Environmental Sustainability”。
投稿截止日期:2025年7月31日。
期刊介绍

- 2023年影响因子:2.5 Citescore: 3.5
- Environmental Research Communications(ERC)是一本开放获取期刊,涵盖与环境研究相关的所有领域,包括跨学科和多学科的研究。ERC发表推动该领域知识的所有研究结果,包括增量研究、负面结果、无效结果、案例分析、区域性研究和复制研究。