Could AI Trick Humanity Into “Sayf Ibn Dhi Yazan” Dilemma?

Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan was a king of the Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen about 1500 years ago. His kingdom was attacked and conquered by the Abyssinians (Ethiopians). Despite his efforts to resist, he was ultimately exiled. But he succeeded in liberating Yemen from Abyssinian rule with the help of the Persian Empire. However, this victory led to Yemen falling under Persian influence, placing Sayf in a more challenging situation. This historical story is often referenced when someone attempts to fix a situation but ends up making it worse.

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OK, let's jump to AI. There are significant opportunities for this technology to help humanity tackle various challenges, including climate change. AI can develop models to optimize energy use, reduce overall consumption, and monitor and analyze emissions data. Additionally, AI can improve agricultural practices, enhance recycling processes and waste management systems, improve climate models to predict environmental changes, aiding in proactive environmental protection measures, and much more.

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From one perspective, AI could be humanity's savior against climate change challenges. However, on the other hand, as Saudi Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan mentioned a few days ago at #FIIPRIORITY Rio, the energy consumption for one day of ChatGPT processing is equivalent to that of 283,000 Californian homes for one year. This is about one form of AI technology in its early days, just imagine the situation combining multiple forms of AI technologies few years down the road, this could become the worst nightmare for climate change!

Will humanity fall into the “Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan” dilemma, where in seeking AI support against climate change challenges, it ends up making the problem even worse?

I believe that while AI experts are heavily focused on exploring and addressing major global challenges, they also need to look inward at AI itself. They should develop new technologies and methods to optimize AI processes, reduce energy consumption, lower its carbon footprint, and make AI more environmentally friendly... I believe we can achieve this; we simply overlooked this aspect...