Rethinking Sustainability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Among the most relevant transformations that have affected contemporary society is the one in which algorithms and, more generally, artificial intelligence (AI) are the protagonists. These sociotechnical tools find applications in fields ranging from public institutions through the economy to the everyday lives of people, thus influencing multiple phenomena. In recent years, the topic of sustainable development has become central to the public discourse and national and international planning. The UN definition of sustainability is the 'satisfaction of the needs of the present generation without compromising those of the future generation', and to achieve this it has drawn up the 2030 Agenda. The pervasiveness and relevance of AI mean that it can be either a facilitator or an obstacle to sustainable development. In an article in Nature, Vinuesa et al. (2020) highlighted how AI can both facilitate the achievement of sustainable development goals and pose a threat to almost half of the goals set out in the agenda. The importance of AI in contemporary society requires a redefinition or, at any rate, a recalibration of the concept of sustainable development to 'protect' those areas that have become particularly sensitive with its pervasive diffusion, such as that of privacy, which is not directly mentioned by any of the 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda. Accordingly, the UN in 2017 issued a 'Guidance note on big data for achievement of the 2030 Agenda,’ entitled 'Data privacy, ethics and protection.’ Therefore, the focus on the role of AI in achieving sustainability should be accompanied by a reflection on how the concept of sustainability is transformed when it is related to AI. Therefore, the work proposed here aims to discuss how and on what dimensions the concept of sustainability changes in an AI society.