Empowering Change by Exploring AI Solutions for Sustainability 

 

Motivation 

The pace of technological developments continues unabated. In 2023, the release of large-language models like Chat-GPT and other AI-based applications or features raised the popularity of generative AI. Along with that, the awareness of its impact on all parts of the society and economy grows. Even small and medium-sized companies have to face the fact, that AI is no longer a futuristic concept but an economic factor. In a survey conducted in the first half of 2023 among 600 US American companies already using AI in their processes, Forbes found that 97 % of business owners believe AI is beneficial for their businesses1. Determinants such as market pressure positively influence the AI adoption rate of companies (Rodríguez-Espíndola et. al 2022). 

The increasing relevance of AI raises more general and ethical questions, such as the impact of AI on societies, economies, individuals and the environment. Non-technical concerns are more and more addressed, not only in the context of AI development but also in its adoptions. Concepts like human-centred AI (Mhlanga 2022) or Industry 5.0 (Barata & Kayser 2023) address this perspective and a variety of initiatives2, e.g., the European AI Act, bring together experts from different fields to discuss terms for regulation. All these concepts and initiatives do, directly or indirectly, address the question of sustainability. In a systematic analysis based on the 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) and 169 targets from the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN 2023), Vinuesa et al. (2023) determined, that AI has the potential to act as an enabler on 79 % of the targets across all SDGs. Nevertheless, the focus of most AI technologies is on economic growth (Nasir 2023).  

The objective of the AI Tomorrow conference is to enhance the discourse about sustainable AI and AI for sustainability by placing the three pillars of Industry 5.0 (human-centricity, resilience, sustainability) at the centre of the scientific discussion for a successful digital transformation. This topic is closely associated to the 17 SDGs, which will also be one focus of this scientific discourse. AI Tomorrow provides a platform to researchers from various disciplines to discuss the potentials, obstacles and practical approaches of sustainable AI and the role that AI can play in achieving the sustainability goals. This concerns the human-centred design of AI as well as the question of the potential of AI for achieving more resilience, more gender equality, fairer distribution of wealth, etc.  

CfP Guidelines 

Submissions will be required to be unpublished and not under review elsewhere. The conference proceedings are published by Springer. Therefore, contributions must follow the LNCS Template (Microsoft word or LaTeX2e): https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

Papers should be submitted in PDF format ranging from 8 to 12 pages in length (excluding references).
 

Important dates:  

AI-Tomorrow provides a double-blind peer review process for all research papers. In the first stage of submission, authors and any other personal information that allow to draw a conclusion on authorship (e.g., a funding reference in the acknowledgement) should not be named in the paper, either explicitly or implicitly. The reviewers do not have access to the names of the authors. 

List of topics 

Contributions are invited from multiple and diverse disciplines such as computer sciences, social sciences, law, policy as well as engineering. This wide array of disciplines will allow to fuel both the interdisciplinary nature of the research regarding AI development and implementation and impact on sustainability. Research papers, both research-in-progress and full-research, should address practical insights of AI design, development and implementation. Relevant topics are listed but not limited to: 

Contact 

If you have any further questions, please contact us: info@ai-tomorrow.org 

 

References 

Barata J., Kayser I. (2023). Industry 5.0 – Past, Present, and Near Future, Procedia Computer Science, Volume 219, pp. 778-788, ISSN 1877-0509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2023.01.351 

Mhlanga, D. (2022). Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: The Superlative Approach to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Sustainability 2022, 14 (13): 7804. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14137804 

Nasir O., Javed R.T., Gupta S., Vinuesa R., Qadir J. (2023). Artificial intelligence and sustainable development goals nexus via four vantage points, Technol. Soc. 72 (2023), 102171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102171  

Rodríguez-Espíndola O., Chowdhury S., Dey P.K., Albores P., Emrouznejad A. (2022). Analysis of the adoption of emergent technologies for risk management in the era of digital manufacturing. Technol Forecast Soc Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121562 

United Nations (2023). Global Sustainable Development Report 2023. Advance Unedited Version.