The energy and material demands behind artificial intelligence (AI) technology raise serious questions about the environmental impacts of widespread AI adoption. Understanding these environmental-related consequences is an important component of what it means to be AI literate. Within the sphere of higher education, colleges and universities are launching initiatives to help students, faculty, and staff attain higher levels of AI literacy. Many AI literacy frameworks already call for competency in the societal and environmental impacts of AI technologies. However, tracking down and piecing together existing information about environmental impacts is not easy, making it more challenging for librarians, faculty, and students to attain robust, comprehensible materials about the varied effects of AI on the planet.

Ithaka S+R is undertaking a new project that aims to help make it easier to include information about environmental impacts in AI literacy frameworks and training. Thanks to funding from the Mellon Foundation, “Incorporating Environmental Perspectives into AI Literacy” will produce and circulate materials to support teaching and evaluating the environmental dimensions of AI. This grant funds the creation of three key resources:

  • A libguide with information about and links to resources on AI, climate change, and other environmental impacts that librarians can use as a base resource to build and iterate on.
  • An environmental AI literacy framework that will present a set of user competencies for understanding the relationship between AI and environmental impact.
  • Modular course content to provide librarians, instructors, and others with guidance for how to incorporate the environmental impacts of widespread AI use into their AI literacy curricula.

These resources will be made openly available on Ithaka S+R’s website to facilitate the ability of educators, librarians, and others to teach and learn about the consequences of widespread AI adoption for the environment.

To learn more about this project or Ithaka S+R’s other work related to AI literacy in higher education, please reach out to Claire Baytas (claire.baytas@ithaka.org).