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Artificial Intelligence is all the rage these days. There are universities doing research, op-eds in newspapers, and even several articles in this space talking about artificial intelligence and machine learning and how it will affect our lives in the years to come. Unfortunately, most of the focus has been on how it can be used to improve the bottom lines for businesses around the world. Don\\u2019t get us wrong, we\\u2019re not knocking the profit motive. However, we are knocking the idea that you have to keep on making more and more profit. That drive has a way of dehumanizing people (and frankly even the people with the drive) and making people lose focus on the things that really matter in the world.\\xa0

One of the effects of the constant drive for more profits is the drive to consume more things. More and more we look like Huxley\\u2019s Brave New World in which consumerism is promoted by the state, to the extent they put out slogans like \\u201cthe less stitches, the more riches\\u201d to promote people buying new clothes instead of mending what they already have. Every economic \\u2018stimulus\\u2019 is given in the hopes that people use that money to go buy a bunch of stuff to keep things moving. Consumerism is a huge problem in the modern world. This is true both spiritually and materially, though for this article we\\u2019ll be focused on the material problems.\\xa0

Whether it is the government or business telling us that the way to happiness is the latest and greatest smartphone, TV, car, etc. this creates problems. All of that stuff requires resources to make. Minerals, trees, oils and who knows what are used every time something like that is purchased. And the old goes into landfills, which are gigantic, so gigantic in some places that people literally live on them in places like India, making a living off reselling some of the things in them. We\\u2019ve gotten better at reusing a lot of that stuff, being able to recycle things made of the rare minerals mined in Africa or melting down plastics so they can be remolded into something else. However, there is a finite amount of stuff on the planet and a growing population that will naturally keep using that stuff. We might well find ourselves able to get into space and use resources there before much longer, but it wouldn\\u2019t hurt to also reduce our dependency on the drive to constantly have more stuff as well.\\xa0

Which brings us back to our primary issue for this article, how can we use our digital technology to reduce that need? How can we use things like AI to make things more sustainable? Fortunately, our ability to collect and analyze data is just as unparalleled as our increased drive to consumerism. Improved analytics can be used for a variety of efforts that will make farming more efficient, enabling people to get the most food out of a plot of land while doing the least amount of harm to the environment.\\xa0

We can learn how to build safer, smaller, and lighter vehicles so that they use fewer resources, are more fuel efficient and still allow people to get from point A to point B. AI can be used to study the effects of different zoning laws. Would it be better to allow more mixing of business and residential areas so people don\\u2019t need to drive ten minutes whenever they need a gallon of milk?\\xa0

There is a lot of potential here. And a lot of ways that potential can be undermined. We\\u2019ll be exploring both of those a bit more next time.

What\\u2019s your data worth? www.tartle.co