Ethical Implications of AI in Environmental Policy Formulation

Including Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the development of an environmental policy framework, one is likely to be able to change the complex systems of the sustainability issues. AI has provided means to improve the decision process such as the predictive modelling and climate forecasting, and also in the optimization processes of resource allocation. However, these developments are also accompanied by other unethical pressing issues of transparency, responsibility, biasness, human judgments, data confidentiality and privatization of automation. The issue of AI in environmental governance relayed in this chapter is first given, namely, its ability to generate innovation and responsibility on the one hand and, on the other hand, the ethical influence of AI on the matter that, in this case, could sink into the other. It gives technological criticism to the ideations of creation and morals that AI is imposed upon when regulating the environment to promote the inclusive ecological justice as the overall ethical standpoint. Next to the case studies of the AI-based intervention in the environment is contrasted the results of positive impacts that it is expected to raise and its adverse side effects. The chapter demonstrates the absence of proper regulatory policy, holistic decision-making and multidisciplinary cooperation of the fictional solution AI technologies perform in the framework of the democratic environmental management. Overall, the article was claiming that accountable leadership could promote innovation to enable AI technologies to multiply reasonable sustainable outcomes instead of indulging in systematic favoritism and ecological susceptibility agglomeration.