Climate Change, Intergenerational Fairness, and the Promises and Pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence

Among his many achievements, Daniel Kahneman will be remembered for his fundamental contribution to the economics of fairness with its many far-reaching applications. In this paper, I focus on intergenerational fairness and its importance in tackling climate change, a high-stakes example of an intergenerational dilemma. Drawing on recent technological advances, I explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to promoting fairness and cooperation in intergenerational dilemmas. An intergenerational dilemma is characterised by three key features: asymmetry in decision power and outcomes, no possibility for reciprocity between generations, and the global nature of the problem. Building on the literature of (contemporary) economic games, I discuss how AI has the potential to change “the rules of the game” by acting as a market participant or a market maker (i.e., social planner). I outline several directions for future research, where applying AI to the problem of intergenerational dilemmas shows promise, including intra- and intergenerational fairness, long-term preferences, and mechanism design. However, while AI holds the potential to help us tackle major societal issues like climate change, I conclude with a cautionary note that excessive use of AI today—even if well-intended to benefit future generations—could further accelerate the very problems, including climate change, that we set out to tackle.