Primo Capital | Meet the Expert - Cristiano De Nobili on AI and Climate Change

15 set 2023 Meet the Expert

Meet the Expert, is a Primo Ventures format exploring boiling topics with industry experts.
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Cristiano De Nobili, Physicist & Lead AI Scientist, shared with us his point of view on AI and its intersection with climate action.

Everyone talks about AI today, but as an expert, what is the most exciting development of AI deployment you have seen up until now?

From a theoretical point of view, if I had been asked this question six months ago, my answer would have been the Transformer architecture, based on the simple but powerful self-attention mechanism behind many successful applications, such as ChatGPT (the letter T in GPT stands for Transformer).

Today, as a physicist, I think the most exciting things are the emerging capabilities of Large Language Models. The complexity of LLMs allows them to exhibit an increasing number of capabilities that have not been coded or are not part of any training. Some have been recently discovered, others are still hidden. Some are similar to human abilities, such as simple mathematical or reasoning skills. Others may have no human analogue.

Excluding generative AI and LLMs, I have been quite impressed by some applications of AI at CERN. In particular, it is impressive how Deep Learning models are optimised to process particle data quickly. Particle collisions generate a petabyte of collision data per second (much more than the Netflix database) and Deep Learning models must be able to exclude and classify all known particles as noise, filtering out only new phenomena with a latency of less than a microsecond.

In your opinion, to what extent AI will play a role in fighting climate change?

In essence, climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity as a whole. The recent extreme events in Italy are just one confirmation of this. On the other hand, AI is one of the most powerful tools ever developed by humans. There should be a combination they should meet.

First of all, if not used wisely, AI and the computing power used to run it will only contribute negatively to carbon emissions. On the other hand, if a non-negligible percentage of AI scientists and engineers become engaged in climate-related issues and focus their efforts towards more efficient algorithms and more impactful applications, then AI could play a primary role.

Although a small percentage of AI specialists are devoting themselves to climate issues, AI is already proving its usefulness in both adaptation and mitigation of climate change. With regard to mitigation, AI and, more generally, data-driven solutions are making progress in sustainable energy, solar and wind power, and nuclear fusion. Regarding climate change adaptation, with my team at the Pi School we have recently been working on fire prediction using remote sensing and earth observation data mainly from ESA satellites. AI is widely used to assess the risk of climate-related disasters, such as floods or fires, helping communities to prepare and respond.

How do you stand out as a startup that uses AI, given that there are hundreds of them emerging every month?

Yes, tons of artificial intelligence startups emerge every month. I think there are two secrets to standing out. The first is to build a core technology, software or product, that is strongly research-based. This can be extremely difficult and requires a strong technical team with expertise in AI and related fields. A typical example would be a startup that is a spin-off of some university lab, like DeepMind a few years ago.

The second possibility to stand out is to have a strong mission, aiming to solve a specific real-world problem, and to use a customized version of an established AI to achieve it.

In both cases, it always takes an enthusiastic, competent and agile team. Another, perhaps less important, but sometimes helpful secret is to choose a good name that can encapsulate the mission at a glance.

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