From artificial to circular intelligence to support the well-being of our habitat

TL;DR

This paper introduces Circular Intelligence (CIntel), a novel framework that leverages community-driven, ethical AI principles to monitor and support planetary health while minimizing socio-environmental impacts.

Contribution

It proposes a new conceptual and procedural framework, CIntel, inspired by nature's regenerative abilities, integrating ethical principles to enhance habitat stability and well-being.

Findings

CIntel offers a sustainable approach to AI for environmental monitoring.

The framework emphasizes community involvement and ethical design.

Preliminary concepts demonstrate potential for habitat preservation.

Abstract

The proliferation of machine learning and artificial intelligence redefines the interaction between the anthropogenic and natural elements of our habitat.The use of monitoring tools, processing facilities and the internet of things supports the assessment of planetary health at any given time through automation. However, these data, natural resources and infrastructure intensive technologies are not neutral on the Earth. As the community of AI practitioners works on the creation of tools with minimal socio-environmental impacts, we contribute to the these efforts by proposing a novel conceptual and procedural framework which we call Circular Intelligence or CIntel. CIntel leverages a bottom-up and community-driven approach to learn from the ability of nature to regenerate and adapt. CIntel incorporates ethical principles in its technical design to preserve the stability of the habitat, while also increasing the well-being of its inhabitants by design.