AI in Climate Change Mitigation: Nayat Sánchez-Pi Presents Inria Chile’s Advances at the Scientific Seminar of the AmSud Programs in Brazil

On November 14, the FINATEC at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB) hosted the Scientific Seminar of the AmSud Programs. Under the theme 'Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change: Research and Innovation in the AmSud Programs,' the event brought together researchers and representatives from funding agencies in France and South America to discuss shared challenges and strengthen regional cooperation. 

Organized by the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES), together with the Regional Secretariat of the AmSud Programs—managed by the Regional Cooperation Directorate for South America (DRC) and the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID)—alongside the Research Institute for Development (IRD) and the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), the seminar reaffirmed the need for open and multidisciplinary science to address global challenges. The event featured participation from various research funding agencies across South America, representatives from ministries such as France’s Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and national research organizations and institutes, including Inria.

Within this framework, Nayat Sánchez-Pi, Director of Inria Chile and the Franco-Chilean Binational Center on Artificial Intelligence, was invited to deliver the event’s keynote address, “The Role of AI in Climate Change Mitigation”. 

Sánchez-Pi highlighted Inria Chile’s role as a driving force for research, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer, emphasizing how the center actively fosters national, regional, and bilateral collaboration with academia, industry, and both the public and private sectors to tackle the challenges of the digital revolution.

During her presentation in Brasília, Nayat Sánchez-Pi introduced Inria’s role as a Digital Programs Agency and highlighted two of its most emblematic initiatives: the Artificial Intelligence Program and the Digital and Environmental Program.

The dual impact of computer science—particularly artificial intelligence—was the central theme of her talk. On one hand, she emphasized how AI is a key tool for understanding and mitigating climate change, while on the other, its development and use contribute to energy consumption and, consequently, the climate crisis. The relationship between AI and climate change is complex and can be broken down into four key areas:

• Understanding: AI for modeling and comprehending the planet;

• Mitigation: AI for climate change mitigation;

• Footprint: Mitigating AI’s own ecological impact; and

• Risks: Managing the systemic risks introduced by AI.

In Inria Chile’s efforts to address these challenges, standout initiatives include the OcéanIA project, where an interdisciplinary team—comprising over 20 researchers and students from various institutions in France and Chile—develops AI tools, machine learning, and mathematical modeling to answer critical questions such as: How does the ocean mitigate climate change? How is the ocean itself changing due to this phenomenon? And what actions should be taken to promote sustainable practices, conservation, and climate change mitigation?

She also explained how this project uses data from the Tara Ocean Foundation’s expeditions—which have collected over 40,000 samples and millions of images, and with whom Inria Chile has a strategic partnership—to study plankton. Through deep learning models, the team aims to understand plankton biodiversity and predict its role in carbon sequestration under various climate change scenarios.

She also previewed the vision for OcéanIA 2.0, which aims to develop a digital twin of the ocean and create MOFOMO (Multimodal Ocean Foundation Model)—a multimodal foundation model focused on the ocean, trained with images, genomics, and environmental metadata to scale our understanding of these ecosystems. The goal is to advance the use of AI as an assistant for research, which is increasingly possible thanks to recent advances in the field of reasoning.

To counter the energy consumption impact of artificial intelligence, she highlighted Inria Chile’s leadership in frugal or green AI initiatives, including international projects like Green AI and SusAIn (Sustainable AI), developed in collaboration with institutions from France, Brazil, and Chile.

These initiatives aim to create scalable, accessible, and eco-friendly AI by focusing on three key areas:

• Improved hardware: Use of more efficient processors and low-precision computing.

• Energy management: Resource optimization and adoption of green energy in data centers.

• Model reuse: Promotion of transfer learning and active learning to reduce the need for massive training from scratch. 

The event also underscored the importance of international collaboration, highlighting the unique opportunity presented by the Franco-Chilean Binational Center on Artificial Intelligence as a vital platform connecting Latin America and Europe, focused on integrating innovation ecosystems, training advanced talent, and promoting ethical AI aligned with the common good.

The Director of Inria Chile explained that the center’s mission is to tackle the Grand Challenges of AI, positioning it as a tool for development, inclusion, and bridging gaps in key areas:

• AI for Science and Sustainability

• Secure AI for the Common Good

• AI for Emerging Economies