Hidden in plain sight, digitalisation has appeared as one – if not the – central force of change in the 21st century. The digital age offers the potential to both enable and radically counteract the socio-ecological transformation. Correspondingly, structuring the digitalisation wave has becomes an important factor for sustainability policy.

When used wisely artificial intelligence (AI) can produce a new level of quality for solution strategies. The question remains: do we require a new collective knowledge-based solution for using AI to address issues of sustainable transformation in organizations, economic systems and infrastructures? The Ecological Research Network (Ecornet) invited the public to discuss this question.

This event was a part of the Ecornet Future Forum (Zukunftsforum Ecornet) event series. The event "AI² – New Intelligence for Sustainable Transformation?" contributes to this discussion with information from current scientific analyses while creating a framework for political exchange.

About the event series Zukunftsforum Ecornet

Future: The term "Future" has long become a central concept in environmental and sustainability policy debates. Whereas in the past threat scenarios dominated the debate, today the focus is increasingly on the possibilities for shaping the future: What kind of world do we want to make possible for present and future generations?

Forum: Shaping an ecologically sustainable and socially equitable future can only succeed through conversations between politics, science, business and civil society. Ecornet aims to bring together the various actors and offer them a forum for jointly tackling the social problems of our time.

Ecornet: Concrete social problems require concrete proposals for solutions. Ecornet aims to help shape social change towards sustainability and to provide the required scientific basis for this purpose. With thematic and methodological diversity and work at the interfaces between science and society, the eight Ecornet institutes provide answers to the pressing questions of our time.