First Meeting of Planet Positive 2030

Save the planet. Abolish poverty. Work for world peace. (Or is it wish for world peace and war on poverty?). Everyone’s to-do list. Right? Fair assumption since no one says they are against any of them!

But has anyone checked it off their list. I mean like how we check off ‘Clean the house’ at least once a week? How many of us have a clue about their local water supply, their local green initiatives, or how much recycling is done at a local level. Neither do we know how the war on poverty or war on drugs is doing so far. Or how many actual wars (other than the ones we made up), are going on and why. (Google it. Its that easy to find out).

The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. I was worried I would be on it. Over the years I have tried to learn at least at a local level on how to be aware of these global to-do lists.

Awareness is the greatest agent for change according to Eckhart Tolle.

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The war on poverty is waged on those who are poor and so is the war on drugs, waged on those impacted by its use. I spent time studying the homeless around San Jose city, a major tech hub for Silicon Valley, trying to understand the root causes of why some are so poor in middle of so much economic prosperity.

I actually worked with those who are actively working on that problem. Trying to answer the questions that we all ask and then convert into statements ourselves without seeking a valid answer. Are they really lazy? All are drug addicts? All have mental health issues? Freeloaders? System failures or society failures?

With great zeal I asked someone (who works and sleeps with them for 40 years) on how we can solve this. With a notepad in hand, ready to jot down key learnings and ‘actionable insights’, I said to him?“I know I sound na?ve but I’m sure if we identified the nuances in the problem and brought all stakeholders together, we can solve this”.

Beaming with a smile, he said “Susanna, you are not na?ve at all”.

I was so pleased to hear that.

Then came the mic drop.

?“Someday I want you to grow up and become na?ve. Because right now you are delusional. You study Psych, right? Na?ve is normal. Delusion is not”.

Unfortunately, I never grew up to become na?ve. I gave up eventually. ?I continued to be delusional and attended many Save the – events. Most of them hosted a dedicated bunch of frustrated, na?vety drop-outs like me, meeting together to bemoan the end of the world and the lack of concern in the younglings. When the 20 somethings said that – I wondered if they are blaming the kindergartners for not taking any action on global warming but when the 60 somethings said that - I knew they were blaming my generation. ??

Maybe it all started sounding like moral grandstanding to me and maybe it made me more cynical - so I stopped attending or supporting most of them and decided to focus on what I can do, at my level, by educating myself.

Like understanding the impact of almond growth on the environment. The impact of the clothing industry on water resources on jeans manufacturing. Adoption of grains like quinoa in the mainstream diet and their impact on the native communities for whom it was and still is their only staple diet source.?

I stopped buying jeans, gave away most of them and decided to wear the ones I kept until it shreds. But I didn’t stop eating almonds. Neither I did start eating quinoa as a healthy choice. I think twice before I trash something. Willing to pay three times more for things that will last longer. ?

I created art to share what I know. Did a series in water conservation and global warming. Started an Earth Centric story project for the pandemic.

Learned what my city does vs what it says it does. Asked questions. Listened quietly to answers I didn’t like or agree with. Said goodbyes to trees tagged for removal in the name of development with the same anguish shown for a loved one’s last rites. Called for the removal of unsafe trees with the same civic duty of someone calling in to report a crime to law enforcement.

I learned that metal straws maybe better for the environment but not inclusive of humans in wheelchairs. ?Reusable bags are environment friendly but may or may not be pandemic friendly. Plastics create havoc on the oceans but banning them may push the ?healthcare sector to the dark ages.?

I learned that nuances in the initiatives do matter but so does courage for picking a side and standing your ground.

That concern for anything need not be binary. But ethics can never be bipartisan.

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Above all I learned that being delusional about a better future is absolutely necessary for a saner present.

When the First Meeting of IEEE Planet Positive 2030 event appeared in my email via an invite by Sudha Jamthe , I was not hoping for much. Except for the subtitle of “Advancing Technologies for Sustainability” that grabbed my attention. I was intrigued and decided to go see what technology can do to solve this. The advancement of tech propelled humanity to new heights but it also created the problems that Earth faces today. I was skeptical to know how tech can solve some of what it created in the first place.

The invite asked those in person to be part of a writing committee to establish standards by IEEE. I signed up to be part of the Forest & Trees Committee. The caliber of the discussion and how they were moderated by Max Song was impressive. His ability to type on the Miro boards at the same speed in which everyone was speaking was even more impressive!

A layout of the problem statement by everyone revealed so much more that I was not even aware of. The scope of the problem extends to who owns the forests, the land, or the trees, and then to laws and individual responsibilities. One member shared the story of how trees on their family’s personal land was stolen (cut down by loggers) while they were on vacation and how the police told them that since trees don’t have any serial numbers, they cannot track them or pursue the criminals. Another shared how they researched that light lamps on trees helped them grow faster but also made those trees less frost resistant. Their discovery interested parties that wanted to use that information on enemy territories as a weapon of destruction. I learned about avocados and their impact on the environment from another member.

The use of incentives to protect the environment was discussed as well as the role of technology at both ends of the issue. Carbon credits? AI dashboards? Drones and satellites? Blockchain philosophy and technology to protect the environment? Here was the first time I heard about sustainable blockchains, environmentally friendly mining and cryptocurrency – is there such a thing? Apparently, there is.

We dove deep and discussed the pros and cons of each. Is wood a better building material alternative? Yes and no. Concrete, I learned is not environmentally friendly. I shared the well-known secret of my city’s tree canopy count.

The event also had keynotes and speaker sessions on day one and day two.?

Day 1: Kathy Baxter emphasized on a panel that not everybody can meet these goals, but high tides rise all boats, and if we all come together, share our data together then we can solve this. Kathy also asked a pertinent question – how do we take a bio centric approach to ethics? Not human centric. Interesting question that I have been asking for a long time.

Kathy raised the question of how we define AI when we talk about bias, and whether that is limited to ML or does it extend to all automation, including Excel macros which can do a lot of harm and some governments are using it, and unless we agree on standards in definitions on such things, we can’t move the dialogue to how much GPUs, or how much carbon emission is too much.

Day 1: Melodena Stephens talked about how little everyone knows about the SDGs – she suggested we start with the fundamentals. She talked about the unintended consequences of faster adoption by quoting that it took 68 years for 50 million people to adopt the airplane and 19 days to adopt Pokeman Go.

Day Two: 7.23 min. ?Started off with Chief Weaver Mila A. – you have to watch the recording to get a grasp of the level of co-dependence and interdependence that we have with Earth.

Day two. 58 min. Mei Lin Fung shared the story told by Vint Cerf, the pioneer of the internet, about how to answer the question of stopping a big boulder rolling off the cliff and coming down on a village below. A well-placed pebble will stop the boulder. Mei believes that we are the well placed pebble. She shared how when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia, and having no natural resources like water or land, it looked to the only resource it had, which was people and saw them as individual assets, to build the Singapore miracle of success. She shared the Meteoric shower poem by Edna Saint Vincent Malay which elicited a round of applause from the audience as it resonated so much with the event. Mei spoke on making sure every person gets to flourish when they identify a problem that hinders that process. She emphasized that the idea of seeking venture capital support when you identify a problem is not the way to go. I agree. I see how much I struggle with the idea of AI4Nomads PBC? and trying to find support for it using the established means.

John C. Havens ended the panel with a powerful message on what we all can hope to see as fruits of the labor started today in 8 years in 2030.

Day two: 2.27min: Max Song presented the insights of our committee along with me and Ian Monroe on the stage representing the rest of our committee. I believe as an artist in “Recording your perspective for others” both literally and figuratively, so you will see me snapping a pic from the stage in that video; a perspective that most fail to capture. Here is that pic.

Day two: 2.46min: Our Usha Jagannathan, PhD shared the insights from the newly formed committee of Sustainability Commons that she chaired. Usha and I know each other since the pandemic connected us virtually. But I realized this was the very first time I am meeting her in person!

There is an interesting article on how you can detect deepfake video by asking the person to turn sideways on a video call, to profile view. Because there is not enough training data on profile views so the algo fails, but human brain does not train their facial recognition model in full or profile views but rather holistically. Proof of that – I recognized Usha from behind, by the back of her head sitting in front of me. Having never seen a person in real life (or the back of her head for that matter) before, I was amazed at how I could recognize her!

Here she is with her lovely daughter Akhsaya, John C. Havens , me and one more person who also chose to wear red that day (If anyone knows her name, let me know so I can tag).

Day two 24 min: Susan Athey told the interesting story of how the government and the private sector came together to produce the Covid19 Vaccines in record speed and scale. She talked about the value of “socializing ideas’, a social science approach for better co-operation and innovation in the public health sector.

Not on the official recording for some reason were the talks by the two artists. (Are art talks not worthy of prime time?) Gabrielle Aruta and Agnieszka Pilat . I had the pleasure of meeting them both and Gabriela was on the Forest & Trees committee.

Agnieszka talked about a world of humans and robots and art – the merging of art and technology. Gabriela talked about the new art forms created from NFTs and how the artworld is using new mediums to advocate for social causes

The other interesting personality I met was Shannon Mullen O'Keefe , the chair of the Rivers and Lakes Committee, who is building a museum of ideas. A place to preserve thinking. I loved that idea. If you are intrigued, ask her about it!

And part of the human wisdom and culture committee was Sarah Crooks who was my lunch partner and I learned so much about the Circular Economy from her. I hope I can bring her on a public forum one day to let the world hear about this initiative.

It was two days of intellectual food for thought and yes there was actually food for the attendees.

I know I talked about quinoa earlier and that is what I had for lunch on one of those days!?

Food waste was not part of the discussions but unfortunately it was part of the event. Near the end of the evening on the last day, a group of us saw the cleaners getting ready to clean up and one of them said to us “You are welcome to take any of these home as we are going to trash it anyways”. It was not one or two boxes of lunch but hundreds of them.

It broke my heart.

Some of us including me took as we needed but still many were left to be trashed. It was so ironic that this was a sustainability event and in practice, we were not being sustainable.

California throws away 6 million tons of food. And if food waste were a country, according to UN, it will rank as the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) you did an amazing job along with IEEE to host this event but how about having a plan in place to become #ZeroFoodWasteAtHAI for your future events? Shall we make this hashtag go viral? Like a high tide that rises all boats big or small as Kathy Baxter eloquently put it, you leading the way will set the standard for others. What do you say?

Here are some ideas – (not that you asked me for it!)

You can borrow a page out from an Indian Asian culture playbook. Do you know we have created an entire cuisine out of leftover food? As a hospitality focused culture, guests can never go hungry so excess is always prepared (that’s how we developed a secondary cuisine) or if it is a surprise visit, then the host bears the price of eating less to make sure the guests are fed well.?

How to translate this to an event? ?Order more than enough for those who registered and going by the number of badges not picked up, arrangements can be made with partner orgs to take the extra (hours before it becomes illegal to distribute going by California’s strict food safety laws). Free food vouchers can be arranged with food delivery service apps for those who arrive late, so they can still order and be part of the community sitting together to eat and network. It costs more than prearranged catering ?but if you ever drop in at an South Indian home at dinner time and your host says she/he just had a big lunch and is not so hungry but keeps serving you loads of food– you know the price we pay to be both hospitable and sustainable.

Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) you can lead the way in food sustainability for the rest of the public events organizing industry – say yes to #ZeroFoodWasteAtHAI!

The event didn’t end at Stanford center for those of us in the Forest and Trees committee, Max Song invited us to a small but private gathering at Palo Alto for Gen Z and Millennials to discuss the future of the planet.

I wrongly assumed I was a Gen Z and looked for a Millennial to accompany me. I picked Siyona Agarwal, the co-president of the AI Youth Council at DataEthics4All?? Foundation . Siyona corrected me and her mom that we are indeed Gen X and that she is Gen Z and people younger than her are millennials.

She said her Gen has a cooler name than ours. (I wasn’t too happy about that comment but she is right).

Here is Siyona with her mom Shilpi Agarwal and John C. Havens

This gathering was unlike anything I was part of. It surprised me on many levels. From impromptu games to spiritual discussions on purpose of life and meaning, Max had designed for a deeper connection to the values we all tried to hold up high the past two days. Met many there on multiple trajectories to building a far, far better world for all of us. People with incredible passion to protect our privacy and to protect our planet sat together and shared a meal.

It was an emotional and very spiritual event.?

I have to say I met a lot of people who never aspired to be normal but diligently pursued delusional ideas to create a sustainable future.

I am more hopeful than ever that what we started at this First Meeting for a sustainable planet will come true in many ways, big or small in 2030.

A picture of the tree that is on the premise of the Stanford HAI Center. An audience member asked the panelists on how to be a "Good Ancestor" - I hope we all become good ancestors to these majestic living beings as well as our human offsprings.