AI for climate: from technological solutions to relational accountability
Despite the promise of "AI-for-climate" to catalyze climate research and action, dominant approaches risk reproducing the same cultural patterns that have fueled ecological breakdown and its unevenly distributed harms. These patterns include human exceptionalism, technosolutionism, and epistemic universalism. By tracing these patterns, this comment situates AI-for-climate within a broader web of extractive planetary relations, examining its potential to either reinforce those relations or contribute to their repair. In doing so, it invites reflection on the ethical and epistemological challenges of co-developing AI systems that are accountable to the diverse human communities, species, and generations who share our entangled Earth.
Authors
- Sharon Stein
Institutions
- University of British Columbia (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Climate Action
- Published
- 2026-04-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-026-00376-0
- Primary Topic
- Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Killam Trusts
- University of British Columbia
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada