When algorithms decide the climate: AI, disinformation, and the crisis of environmental truth in the Anthropocene
Abstract
We often describe the Anthropocene as a planetary emergency. Yet beneath the ecological upheaval lies a deeper and more destabilising fracture: the erosion of environmental truth [1]. By environmental truth, I refer to the collectively negotiated understanding of climate and ecological realities, shaped by scientific, social, and technological processes. Climate knowledge today is reported, debated, and contested, but increasingly it is computed [2]. Algorithmic infrastructures now decide what becomes visible, credible, and politically actionable. My argument here is direct: AI systems and digital platforms have become co-producers of environmental truth, and this reconfigures the very conditions under which climate policy, public debate, and democratic decision-making occur. The Anthropocene is as much a crisis of meaning as it is of ecology.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Misinformation and Its Impacts
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Digital Education and Society
Publication details
- Journal / source
- PLOS Climate
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- e0000799–e0000799
- Publication date
- 16 January 2026
- Language
- EN