Can AI help us tackle the climate crisis?

✌️ G’Day

“AI” and “climate” are on everyone’s lips right now, and with good reason. Whether we like it or not, both artificial intelligence and the climate crisis promise to upend the way we work, live and exist in the world (and not always in the way we’d hope). 😵‍💫

But, is there a silver lining to all this upheaval? Could purposeful entrepreneurs employ AI in the service of humanity, by using it to develop and implement transformative climate solutions at speed and scale? 🤔

To answer this question, we joined forces with marketing guru Katie McPhee to put on EarthAI—a climate-focused AI hackathon in the heart of London. Over two days, 80 participants came up with 20+ ideas, resulting in the organic formation of 12 teams.

Fuelled by pizza and OpenAI credits, and supported by mentors, both IRL and online, the teams spent all Friday night and the best part of Saturday building their climate solutions. Less than 24 hours after they’d first set eyes on each other, the teams presented their AI-powered ideas to the judges. To say that we were impressed with the outcome of the experiment is an understatement. 🙌

🥁 The top three solutions were:

Irrigation AI 🏆
Winner: Best use of AI to tackle Climate
An integrated AI model that evaluates numerous meteorological, soil and plant visibility parameters to ensure both the efficient use of water and the adequate nourishment of crops.

Cli-move 🏆
Winner: People’s Choice
Agent-based modelling merges population migration datasets with climate risk datasets to reduce the uncertainty surrounding climate migration and associated economic risks.

Crop Uncle 🏆
Winner: High Impact
A voice recognition and translation hotline that increases climate resilience among small-scale farmers responsible for feeding 70% of the world, most of whom lack adequate climate support, especially underfunded female farmers.

The other transformative solutions to emerge from EarthAI include:

Green Career Coach: guiding young people towards green careers

Cleansplain: detecting and fighting greenwashing

Natural Elder: gamified fuel reduction in high-risk forest fire zones

5can: increasing transparency in the voluntary carbon market

ELPS Energy: decarbonising homes through retrofitting

Switch EV: helping drivers switch to an EV

ClimbAlign: nudging consumers towards sustainable alternatives

If you’d like to see these AI-powered ideas IRL, come to next month’s pitch night in London where we’ll showcase the first batch of ideas (and more).

In convo with Sarah Wilson 💬

On a hot, late summer evening in Bristol, in the air-conditioned basement of Stanfords Independent Bookshop, we sat down with Sarah Wilson and 40 other curious souls to talk about the wildness and precariousness of the current moment.

In her beautiful new book, This One Wild and Precious Life, Sarah approaches the climate issue through a spiritual lens, by describing the collective “itch” we’re all feeling—the subtle yet all-encompassing sense that we’re not living life as it’s meant to be lived, that we’ve strayed from what matters, and that this is evident from our our broken relationship with the natural world. It’s a feeling many of us can relate to.

Listen to Ben’s conversation with Sarah Wilson on the latest episode of Startups Will Save Us or read Ben’s take on the evening on our blog.

Raaise helps climate and impact founders organise and manage their fundraise so they can get on with building the solutions the world so desperately needs.

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👋🏼 Until next time. Team Raaise

We humbly acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the unceded land on which we live and work. We stand in solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples the world over in their fight for self determination, recognition and justice.