Invited Talk
in
Workshop: Computational Sustainability: Promises and Pitfalls from Theory to Deployment

AI-for-climate: A call for impact-guided innovation

David Rolnick

2023 Invited Talk
in
Workshop: Computational Sustainability: Promises and Pitfalls from Theory to Deployment

Abstract

Machine learning is increasingly being used to help tackle climate change, from optimizing electrical grids to emulating climate models and monitoring biodiversity. As such applications grow, however, it is becoming clear that high-powered ML tools often fall short. Methods designed using standard benchmarks may fail to capture the constraints or metrics of real-world problems, while a “one size fits all” approach ignores useful auxiliary information in specific applications. In this talk, we show how problem-centered design can lead to ML algorithms that are both methodologically innovative and highly impactful in the fight against climate change.

Speaker

David Rolnick

David Rolnick is an Assistant Professor and Canada CIFAR AI Chair in the School of Computer Science at McGill University and at Mila – Quebec AI Institute. He is a Co-founder and Chair of Climate Change AI and serves as Scientific Co-director of Sustainability in the Digital Age and co-lead of the Global Center on AI and Biodiversity Change (ABC). Dr. Rolnick is a Sloan Research Fellow and an AI2050 Early Career Fellow and was named to the MIT Technology Review’s 2021 list of “35 Innovators Under 35” for his work in building the field of AI and climate change. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT and is a former Fulbright Scholar, NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

Video

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