After spending almost a decade working in computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), Sasha Luccioni was ready to uproot her whole life three years ago after she became deeply concerned by the climate crisis.
But her partner convinced her to not give up her career completely but instead apply her knowledge of AI to some of the challenges posed by climate change.
“You don’t need to quit your job in AI in order to contribute to fighting the climate crisis,” she said. “There are ways that almost any AI technique can be applied to different parts of climate change.”
She joined the Montreal-based AI research centre Mila and became a founding member of Climate Change AI, an organization of volunteer academics who advocate using AI to solve problems related to climate change.
Do you have a question about climate change and what is being done about it? Send an email to ask@cbc.ca.
Sasha Luccioni, a founding member of the non-profit group Climate Change AI, decided to apply her computer science knowledge to problems related to climate change. (Camille Rochefort-Boulanger)
Luccioni is part of a growing community of researchers in Canada who are using AI in this way.
In 2019, she co-authored a report arguing that machine learning can be a useful tool for mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change.
Computer scientists define machine learning as a form of artificial intelligence that enables computers to use historical data and statistical methods to make predictions and decisions without having to be programmed to do so.
Common applications of machine learning include predictive text, spam filters, language translation apps, streaming content recommendations, malware and fraud detection and social media algorithms.
Applications for machine learning in climate research include climate forecasting and optimization of electricity, transportation and energy systems, according to the 2019 report.
Preparing for crop diseases
Researchers at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) are using AI modelling to warn farmers about risks to their crops as weather becomes more unpredictable.
“If you have a dry year, you see very little disease, but with a wet year, you can get quite a bit of disease around plants,” said Aitazaz Farooque, interim associate dean of UPEI’s School of Climate Change and Adaptation.
Aitazaz Farooque is the interim associate dean of the UPEI School of Climate Change and Adaptation, which is piloting a project that aims to use weather forecasting to predict crop diseases. (Jane Robertson/CBC)
Researchers can plug weather data from previous years into an AI model to predict the type of diseases that might jeopardize crops at different times of the year, said Farooque.
“Then the grower can be a bit proactive and have an understanding of what they’re getting into,” he said.
WATCH | Take a look at UPEI’s School of Climate Change and Adaptation:
A tour of the new climate change lab at St. Peter’s Bay
26 days ago
Duration 3:55
From the drones to the dorms, the state-of-the-art research facility in St. Peter’s Bay will have students and world-class researchers studying the many facets of climate change.
PEI’s agriculture is mostly rain fed, and providing farmers with more accurate rainfall predictions can also help them have more successful crop yields, said Farooque.
“With climate change, we are seeing different trends where the total cumulative rainfall doesn’t change much, but the timing matters,” he said.
“If it doesn’t happen at the right time, then the sustainability of our agriculture can be at risk.”
Studying behaviour around disruptive weather
Another application of AI is being studied at McGill University, where researchers are using historical and recent weather data to predict the social impacts of extreme weather events that are being affected by climate change, such as heat waves, droughts and floods.
According to Renee Sieber, an associate professor in McGill’s geography department, researchers are hoping to find out how people responded to disruptive weather events in the past and whether that can teach us anything about how resilient we will be in the future.
The McGill Observatory contains weather records from as far back as 1863 that will be used in an AI project analyzing people’s responses to extreme weather events. (McGill University Archives)
The team will use a form of AI called natural language processing to analyze social narratives related to weather events in newspapers and other media.
“The AI is very good for organizing, synthesizing, finding trends or some sentiment out of vast amounts of unstructured text,” said Sieber.
“Basically, what you do is throw journal articles into a bucket, and you see what comes out.”
Sieber said her team will take the findings from past articles and today’s social media and compare them with corresponding weather records to identify people’s responses to weather events over time.
Records from the McGill Observatory are the longest and most detailed uninterrupted written records of weather patterns in Canada and contain a massive amount of information, said Sieber. Weather recording there began in 1863 and continued into the 1950s.
“This data is the only direct measure of climate change that we have [in Canada],” said Sieber.
Optimizing energy use
Some Canadian companies are using AI to minimize waste and build more energy efficient infrastructure.
Scale AI, a Montreal-based investors group that funds projects related to supply chains, has worked with grocery chains such as Loblaws and Save-on-Foods to identifying purchasing patterns. Through AI, companies are able to better predict demand and less food items are going to waste, said Scale AI CEO Julien Billot.
“Every optimization we can achieve improves the resilience of supply chains and contributes to the use of less resources,” she said.
Another Montreal company, BrainBox Al, is focused on improving energy efficiency by optimizing HVAC systems in commercial buildings.
The machine-learning technology is contained in a 30 cm wide box that connects to a building’s HVAC system. It raises or lowers temperatures based on data inputs such as weather forecasts, utility prices and carbon-emission calculations.
BrainBox AI technology optimizes a building’s HVAC system using data such as weather forecasts and utility prices. (BrainBox AI)
The system has been able to cut energy consumed by some HVAC systems by 25 per cent, BrainBox CEO Sam Ramadori said, and over two years, the company has installed the technology in 350 buildings in 18 countries.
“The same kind of intelligence that we are bringing to buildings has probably an infinite number of applications. Just pick a sector,” Ramadori said.
“How we make cement, how we ship goods — all of those need to be made more efficient over time as part of the climate change fight.”
According to Ramadori, BrainBox AI is working on technology that will allow buildings to link up with each other and communicate with energy grids through the company’s cloud server.
Researchers work in the BrainBox AI office. (BrainBox AI)
This has the potential to minimize wasted energy on a city-wide scale as energy grids more accurately detect where and when power is needed, he said.
“The utility grid can say, ‘Hey, the next two hours are going to be busy. I need you to find a way we can reduce consumption.’ And with the AI brain up top, it’s able to say, ‘OK, I can reduce a bit here and a bit there. I’ve got you covered,'” said Ramadori.
Equity limitations to AI
Access to the kind of AI that can help solve climate-related problems is not equal across the globe.
Forest fires in North America, for example, tend to receive more attention from developers than locust infestations in East Africa, said David Rolnick, an assistant professor of computer science at McGill and a member of Mila.
“The way in which climate change impacts a community varies greatly between different geographies,” said Rolnick, who is also the chair of Climate Change AI.
David Rolnick, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University and a member of Mila, said relying on AI to solve climate-related issues raises some equity concerns. (Guillaume Simoneau)
AI technology relies on data sets, and many communities do not have access to enough of the kind of robust data needed to create machine-learning algorithms, Rolnick said.
In Canada, some Indigenous and remote northern communities still face significant digital divides compared with other parts of the country, he said.
“Working on democratizing that is fundamentally important,” Rolnick said.
Rolnick co-authored a study last year outlining various limitations to implementing AI for climate change solutions in Canada. It called for increased funding for AI research and more AI education in primary and secondary education as well as standards and protocols for data sharing related to climate projects.
Rapidly implementing large-scale AI literacy programs for policymakers and leaders in climate-relevant industries could help “demystify” AI, the report said.
“We often see a lack of relevant knowledge, and educational programs can help people understand what these tools can and cannot do,” said Rolnick.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
