Year and volume: 2025 (Vol. 7).
Author(s): Sabina Leonelli.
Abstract: As an alternative to the long history of interpreting artificial intelligence (AI) as the attempt to rationalize and mechanize human ingenuity, thereby transcending nature and its perceived limits, this article proposes an interpretation of the conceptual foundations of environmental intelligence (EI) as the effort to develop digital technology and data-intensive algorithmic systems to sustain and enhance life on this planet. Thus articulated, EI provides a framework to challenge and redefine the philosophical premises of AI in ways that can explicitly spur the responsible and sustainable development of computational technologies toward public interest goals.
That’s a really interesting framing of AI – it makes you think about how we’ve always seen intelligence as separate from the natural world.
Thank you so much for your thoughts! I am inclined to consider at least two potentially relevant themes: (methodological and ontological) naturalism; and bounded rationality (sensu Herbert A. Simon).