Experts speak. A Robotics professor and a researcher in Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University discuss how AI can aid in the fight against climate change

When you read the title, you might wonder: How can something as virtual and abstract as AI assist in combating something as vast and tangible as climate change? Fortunately, the speakers have developed a clever framework that makes this understandable and logical by breaking it down into three clear areas: understanding the problem, predicting the direction, and assisting in the required transformation.

1. Understand the Problem

What do we know for certain? CO2 levels are rising, and the greenhouse effect is real. However, data collection is not very detailed. In the ocean, AI aids in operating autonomous underwater robots equipped with sensors. Remote control is impractical because radio waves do not work underwater, making AI a useful tool for enabling independent navigation.

Africa is a continent with countless challenges, yet the energy question is, of course, a global one. Because ’necessity is the mother of invention’, this panel suggests that it is worthwhile to look at Africa to see what solutions are being found there for energy supply.

First, some facts. 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no electricity. An average refrigerator in the West uses as much electricity as a family in Kenya or Nigeria. And while global energy supply is improving, it is also predicted that by 2030, 90% of people without electricity will be in sub-Saharan Africa.

What happens then: Leapfrogging the grid. Just as mobile telephony meant that the landline telephone network was more or less skipped over, people are now installing solar on their roofs themselves. Because you can’t necessarily count on the government. South Africa is highly dependent on coal, but the high-grade coal is shipped to China, and South Africa itself has to make do with low-grade. And that’s not going to change quickly: The government is closely intertwined with the coal industry.

(Nederlandse versie)

This spring I took a wine course, comparable to level WSET-3, together with my girlfriend. To bring the theory into practice, we spent the past 2 weeks on holiday in France to visit two major wine areas: Burgundy and the south of the Rhone valley. A wine-themed vacation. Here are some of our tips and tricks, do’s and don’ts.

Burgundy

Week 1 was in the town of Beaune, right in the middle in the Cote d’Or. Beaune is an ideal home base to explore the region. Even by foot: If you walk out of the village towards the west, you’ll be between the grapes right away. Burgundy = wine, that’s very clear. And Burgundy is pinot noir and chardonnay, two grape varieties you’ll get to know intimately if you stay here for a week.

Today is the sad day that Steve Jobs died. I want to share a personal story about how his words, simple as they are, have motivated me recently.

I’ve watched his Stanford speech, which I will embed below, several times in the past year. But like most people who watch this, I merely loved it, and didn’t act on it. Until this summer. When I was on holiday, I made a note in my iPhone, which is paraphrasing Steve, I think from the D8 interview.

Going to work should be motivated by a will to do something amazing, to build great products.

According to the Condorcet theorem, bigger crowds do better. If each individual independently decides with the same probability, the collective reaches ’the right’ decision fast. If the individuals can connect, the collective behavior can become very rich and complex. See Linux, wikipedia.

But on social networks, there is no collective ‘goal’ besides connecting, recreation. Still, the chatter can predict the box office receipts. And Google search terms shows where people have flu, better than any medical database. It is also shown that happiness and loneliness is contagious; if many people in your network are lonely, you feel more lonely too.