Using Information and Communications Technology Advances to Leverage the Search of the World New Balance with Less Resources -Part 1-

The paper analyses the changing and dramatic World context, which determines the premises to be associated with a World new balance with less resources and further the most prominent challenges/requirements/restrictions that should come from the crucial reality of climate changes and global warming along with Earth resources fading. New types of performances, which eventually should be associated with a World new balance with less resources, will be more relevant, at Earth ecosystem scale, than, for example, the usual/technical performances of information and communications technology (ICT) or any industry or human activity field (here the Earth resources should include at least energy and materials, either natural, fossil or created by man, although other subsequent or subtle categories should be added). Generally, identifying the new balance goals, like appropriate optimized solutions, is perhaps the most difficult part, because, from the start, here we could find an extremely complex and complicate problem, even if we put it in a concrete area of ICT (for example artificial intelligence - AI) or other industry, amplified by the new restrictions and uncertainties induced in the changing and dramatic World context. More than these, the new restrictions and uncertainties could come from multi-criteria analyses, including the expected/necessary changes in human behaviours, like consumption or rational use of Earth resources. Our approach idea is to reconsider and refine knowledge about the fact that now all the known/old negative trends of Earth ecosystem meet the unprecedented critical/crucial stages/levels which the climate changes and Earth resources fading have reached. In physical terms, but with certain obvious limits, this evaluation is similar with the superposition of effects, leading this way to new concrete/value results. Further, such results could be, in fact, higher or even catastrophic, if not known and prevented. The paper goal is still to consider, now and here, starting from unprecedented loses of lives, energy and materials, the impact of ICT on managing/supporting the research of survival solutions for the emerging crises of energy and materials, still noting that, in fact, the human lives are prominent and more, the expected solutions will leverage saving eventually more lives on Earth. It is worth to recall the link between fossils energy sources, materials and climate changes, as it is largely agreed that the carbon footprint of old technologies of producing energy or materials, along with their use, including transportation industries pollution, are major causes of global warming. More than these, by using less resources, in the actual dramatic World context, we have to understand that, beyond fossil energy sources or diverse materials, the sustainable new World balance has to include changes of paradigms about consumption and efficiency in general. This could also mean new behaviours about using anything, as long as almost anything we could use/act contains energy and materials (even human effort!), including new (non fossil) energy and materials resources. Consequently, we have to use less resources not only because they are limited and more expensive, but inherently they could contribute, in diverse ways, to global warming or Earth resources fading. Perhaps this is why we hear today, more often than yesterday, that the World will be no more what it was . For a confirmation of the realism about the actual Earth context evaluation, although only just for a starting point with simple issues, the IEEE prestige and potential was considered, by analysing some of their solutions proposals on mitigating global warming, at the COP27 event held in Egypt in November 2022. Because the ICT potential is beyond just approaching dramatical challenges and complexity, but, by its advances, it could ease research and find solutions in all human activity areas where inherently the ICT impact is spread at planetary scale, we also analysed another relevant example providing a systemic approach, the Industrial Internet of Things, due to the emerging advances of IoT at Earth scale and to its benefic penetration into all industries first. Considering one of the most important challenges of IoT exploding proliferation, the security/safety, in practice this will become a very complex and complicate problem along with ICT/World actual context, involving a huge research effort, but with promising results in healthcare, transportation, manufacturing and mining , based on adequate technologies, prototypes, systems, models, methods, and applications . The remarkable conclusion of the paper first section is that facing the complexity and complication of the actual dramatical World context, even with the ICT instruments advances, is a new level of challenge everywhere, because of the highly dynamic and uncertainty of Earth ecosystem processes, needing deeper timely analyses and even new paradigms to approach it. The identification and implementation of World new balance with less resources are strongly depending, beyond the Earth natural ecosystem limits, on the complexity which generates their highly dynamic and uncertainty features, where humankind behaviour and evolution are surely basic factors. The traditional what is best , people used almost everywhere, now means to consider, as first priority, the Earth resources fading and the mandatory finding of a new balance of all activities with less resources, but also new ways/paradigms of using the known resources (like fossils energy sources and materials) along with the new sustainable alternatives. One of the subtle, but systemic, contributions of ICT to IS/KBS, beyond products and services, is to lend some of its methods and mechanisms of progress to other areas of human activity [6][9][16]. An actual issue, which is common for ICT/AI advance, but also for World/humankind struggle for a new balance with less resources, is fighting complexity and uncertainty, toward optimizing the World resources and development. We have considered some areas of uncertainty when designing AI as instrument of leveraging the decision processes which could impact the World and generally the humankind future, based on [4] analysis, referring to some usual models and detailed approaches of the basics of AI uncertainty. We have remarked the fundamental difference and correlation between human intelligence (HI) and AI. It is necessary to timely meditate at this AI/HI correlation and its consequences, for both AI potential/future and humankind future [6][9]. Beyond the sophisticated mechanisms of AI and of machine learning (ML), or types of agents they contain, it is important to notice the reflexion of HI features in AI/ML models, which is in fact the territory of continuous improvements for ICT/AI research. Consequently, we have to notice that another feature/challenge of ICT/AI research, also present at HI levels, is the relative separation between risk and ambiguity, as the World processes are very complex and complicate and the transition from known to unknown is the area where ICT/AI have to perform, but sometimes in a vicious circle, in a similar way the refined knowledge is changing, at humankind level, because of the dramatic and dynamic World changes. As final conclusion, we believe that the reviewed actual World context features require to continue deeper and timely analyses, both for the technical ICT processes and the social/human complex evolutions and challenges, in order to meet useful elements which could leverage the search of solutions for the sustainable identification and implementation of World new balance with less resources.