[Air-L] Zoom Seminar - Environmental Impacts of AI

[Sy Taffel]

The Environmental Impacts of AI

 Christine Parker, University of Melbourne and Sy Taffel, Massey University

 Wednesday 20th August, 12:00 - 13:00 NZST

 Zoom: https://massey.zoom.us/j/83251724991

While Big Tech corporations contend that an AI-driven future is both inevitable and a way of straightforwardly fixing climate change and other ecological crises, there has been increasing levels of concern surrounding the environmental impacts of AI. Join Christine Parker and Sy Taffel for a discussion of how we can cut through the greenwash, move beyond simplistic rhetoric of AI as ‘poison’ or ‘saviour’, and demystify some of the problems, practices and potentials surrounding the multiple and complex relationships between AI and the environment.

Christine Parker is a Professor of Law at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society<https://www.admscentre.org.au/>.  Christine teaches and researches socio legal approaches to lawyers’ ethics, business regulation  and corporate accountability.

Sy Taffel is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and co-director of the Political Ecology Research Centre at Massey University, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Sy’s research focuses upon the ecological, material, cultural, and political affordances of digital technologies. His current research project explores the intersections between digital technologies and postgrowth futures.

2025 marks ten years of Massey’s Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC). We are celebrating the occasion by holding a seminar series based on the theme of ‘Environmental Futures’. Across a diverse range of speakers, we will be reflecting on the developments and conversations that have followed on from PERC events and looking toward the future. To see all of the speakers in this series, visit this webpage<https://perc.ac.nz/wordpress/environmental-futures-seminar-series>

Ngā mihi nui,

Sy Taffel and Alice Beban (PERC co-directors)