Artificial Intelligence in the Polycrisis: Fueling or Fighting Flames?

The authors explore how artificial intelligence is increasingly entangled with the polycrisis. Using the Anthropocene Traps framework, they examine 14 self-reinforcing structural dynamics to reveal how artificial intelligence can both exacerbate and help address these crises. While artificial intelligence supports data collection, efficiency, and ecological research, it also fuels unsustainable growth imperatives, infrastructure lock-ins, and disconnection from the biosphere. This ambivalence underscores artificial intelligence’s deep integration within the institutional and economic systems driving the polycrisis.