SHADE Newsletter 21st March 2024

Welcome to the ninth edition of the SHADE newsletter! 

SHADE is a research hub with a mission to explore issues at the intersection of digital technologies/AI, health and the environment. It is guided by a fundamental question: How should the balance between AI/digital enabled health and planetary health be struck in different areas of the world, and what should be the guiding principles?

The SHADE newsletter comes out every two weeks, bringing you a selection of the latest news, upcoming events, academic publications and podcasts in the SHADE space.

In this newsletter, we highlight global narratives on AI. We take a sweep through climate risks, check in on the inexorable growth of health data and its implications, take a look at the latest AI breakthroughs, call out ourselves and much more.  We hope you enjoy it!

Please tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you think is missing at [email protected].   

Highlight on Global Narratives on AI Development

• In the Executive Summary on their AI Nationalism(s) Report, AINow highlight that in US federal R&D strategies, “there is a wholesale acceptance that scale [of AI models] is a proxy for progress and performance”, and no acknowledgement of the environmental impact of this scaling trajectory. Similarly UK and US AI policy documents contain little beyond generic narratives about pushing the frontiers of science and don’t acknowledge the “enormous and well evidenced energy and water costs” of AI. AINow argue for critical questions to be asked around what exactly is the public good of AI.

• Chapter 5 of the report questions UK government claims to shaping safe and responsible AI. It highlights that, after a lost decade in terms of infrastructure development, the UK’s options are reduced to initiatives like making its public sector NHS data available to service the private sector. Furthermore, it is pursuing such options with little attention to leveraging access to this data as a means to shape the AI industry for societal good.

News

• Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks. The European Environment Agency issues its first risk assessment.

• The current popularity of digital health products that monitor blood sugar levels are a good illustration of why healthcare is generating the world’s largest volume of data. Some argue that the blood sugar diet trend is not based on solid science whilst its supporters argue that waiting for research to catch up would be “irresponsible” and “stifling innovation”. Meanwhile the ongoing proliferation of AI, which feeds off this data and consumes vast amounts of energy in the process, is set to accelerate with the launch of new Nvidia chips. It is not surprising that energy grids require ever increasing investment to hit decarbonisation targets. All these recent news stories further illuminate a fundamental question posed by one of SHADE’s co-directors less than a year ago: Does collecting data help us to improve our health? 

• AI’s success in helping radiologists spot breast cancer early in an NHS trial raises expectations of the rollout of such technological innovations. This comes at the same time as calls for the radiology community to consider its already sizeable environmental impact.

• It doesn’t work for everything but when it does work WebAssembly can be very powerful performing specific tasks in fields including epidemiology. Performance improvements mean tasks can be run on low energy or portable devices. Code changes necessary to enable its use and tools built on it are being shared.

What we’re listening to

• Managing AI’s Carbon Footprint in which Sasha Luccioni queries attempts to compare the carbon emissions of people and objects (see this one from Nature which we featured in the last SHADE newsletter). Critiques of the article continue here (22 minutes 40 seconds in) and here (23 minutes in). Has SHADE fallen into the trap of assuming publication in Nature means your methodology is solid?

• Listen to Hannah Smith and Ismael Velasco talking about the challenges in carbon aware computing here.

• From Al Jazeera’s AI series, an episode on AI and the Global South. Environmental considerations feature 13 minutes in.

What we’re reading

• A study with a statistical methodology that employed an unusual depth of data finds the aging population to be a major driver of future climate related deaths.

• A report on Energy Consumption in Data Centres and Broadband Communication Networks in the EU and the questions the report raises for the Green Web Foundation.

• A paper on the AI enabled development of a drug against idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis comes with a ChatPaperGPT tool for readers to critically examine the study. SHADE used the tool to query the study’s carbon footprint. The responses were interesting - try it here.

• A response to a paper evaluating a digital opthamology screening tool is unusual in placing concerns about environmental impact above those around equity and privacy.

Events

• Apply now for this free 4 week course on Global Health, Climate Change and Technology: An Intersectional Approach. It starts April 1st!

• The Medical Informatics Europe Conference will be held this year in Athens from 25th to 29th August. The theme of the conference is Digital health and Informatics Innovations for Sustainable Health Care Systems.

Opportunities

• Call for submissions to a Focus Collection on Environmental Sustainability and Healthcare. The submission window is open now and closes on September 15th. Early submissions are welcomed and encouraged, will be reviewed without delay and published when ready on an incremental basis.

We hope you have enjoyed this newsletter. If it has been forwarded to you, and you would like to receive future editions, you can subscribe here