Apple's Tim Cook says artificial intelligence (AI) presents various ways that businesses can take advantage of to lower their carbon footprint, strategize their recycling efforts, and more.
The CEO participated in the discussion on climate change on Sunday at the China Development Forum.
As the final public demonstration of his company's commitment to China in a week, Cook participated in a conversation at the annual Beijing event.
He previously declared intentions to increase funding for Apple's supply chain, retail locations, and national research while meeting with Wang Wentao, the minister of commerce.
(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 03: Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) and Apple chief design officer Jony Ive (R) look at the new Mac Pro during the 2019 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) at the San Jose Convention Center on June 03, 2019 in San Jose, California. The WWDC runs through June 7.
According to the CEO, AI can assist in addressing the growing issue of climate change by giving businesses that want to become carbon neutral or significantly reduce their emissions access to a vast array of tools.
Cook continues by saying that it can assist companies in determining an individual's carbon footprint, locating things that can be recovered, and providing recycling tactics.
With the Apple Watch being hailed as the company's first carbon-neutral device, Apple has set some of the most aggressive goals among its competitors for lowering its carbon footprint.
Cook's statements and most of his visit were centered around that theme.
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Big Techs' Climate-Centered Initiatives
By 2030, the company hopes to achieve a net-zero climate effect across its business. As of right now, its global corporate activities are carbon neutral. This would cover the entire product life cycle as well as supply chains for production.
Apple has also committed to removing plastic from all of its product packaging by 2025. When it removed the outer plastic wrap from the iPhone 13 packaging, Apple avoided 600 metric tons of trash, demonstrating the impact of even small adjustments when applied throughout a large manufacturing network.
It manufactures hundreds of millions of iPhones, iPads, and Macs every year.
Apple is one of the many tech giants that proves to be leveraging AI in climate action. NVIDIA recently unveiled its AI-powered Earth climate digital twin. A weather and climate simulator that helps people prepare ahead of moderate to extreme weather.
With Earth-2's integration into NVIDIA's CUDA-X microservices environment, cloud-based APIs are made available via NVIDIA DGX Cloud, enabling users to efficiently and in-depthly develop AI-driven simulations of meteorological phenomena.
These models encompass anything from regional weather patterns including turbulence, typhoons, and cloud cover to global atmospheric patterns.
With the release of Earth-2's cloud APIs, climate modeling is expected to significantly advance thanks to the use of AI models and a brand-new CorrDiff generative AI model from NVIDIA.
With 3,000 times less energy consumption, NVIDIA's model produces high-resolution images 12.5 times faster than current numerical models, demonstrating its remarkable potential.
AI's Potential vs. Climate Change
AI has long been seen as a major tool in responding to climate change. As per a November report by the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO), AI-driven technologies provide unheard-of capabilities to process massive volumes of data, extract meaningful knowledge, and improve predictive models.
This entails better modeling and forecasting patterns of climate change, which can assist authorities and communities in creating efficient plans for mitigation and adaptation.
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