By: Erin Vollick
9 Oct, 2023
David Rolnick, Mila: Protecting the world’s biodiversity with AI
October 9, 2023
David Rolnick, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Mila
For Canada CIFAR AI Chair David Rolnick, machine learning and AI are powerful tools to combat climate change. In a 2022 publication that has already been downloaded more than 100,000 times, Rolnick and his co-authors outline ways that AI and machine learning can support climate change adaptation and mitigation – for instance, through localized climate change simulations, parts of which can be sped up by orders of magnitude to help local communities better predict and prepare for extreme weather.
“CIFAR leverages the policy community and the private sector in truly invaluable ways for anyone looking to have an impact beyond the ivory tower.”
David Rolnick, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Mila
In the field, Rolnick’s work is addressing ecological health and biodiversity, such as a program that gathers data to support ecological analyses and policy recommendations – crucial to tracking and reversing the steep decline of global insect populations. The Automated Monitoring of Insects has already deployed across six nations and three continents, analyzing insects and leading to the discovery of over one hundred new species. Additionally, Rolnick is co-leading (with Graham Taylor, a Canada-CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute) the Canadian arm of an international consortium that recently received funding from the National Sciences Foundation (approximately $5M) and NSERC (approximately $3.75M) to detect and respond to the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.
As a co-founder and chair of Climate Change AI, Rolnick has established a global forum for thought leadership, research, funding and policy to better leverage AI to counter the impacts of climate change. Recommendations from this organization are already being incorporated into reports and recommendations tabled nationally and internationally via bodies such as the Global Partnership on AI. Here in Canada, Rolnick also co-leads the Canada CIFAR AI Chairs Working Group in the priority area of AI for Energy and the Environment.
Rolnick lauds CIFAR’s multi-stakeholder ecosystem that ensures the integration of research into industry and shapes policy outcomes — real-world impacts desperately needed to combat the current climate crisis. “CIFAR leverages the policy community and the private sector in truly invaluable ways for anyone looking to have an impact beyond the ivory tower,” says Rolnick, “and AI and climate change is fundamentally about that engagement.”