Welcome back to don't waste our future - a series of interviews about the past, present and future of waste in Ireland. In this episode, we look at the waste issue from the perspective of artificial intelligence or AI. I wanted to know if AI and big data could hold some solutions for reducing waste but also if AI could help lead us to a more sustainable future. I got in touch with Professor Barry O'Sullivan, who is an award-winning academic working in AI and data analytics.Barry's credentials are expansive and his current titles include Chair, Founding Director, Principal Investigator and Adjunct Professor. In June 2018, he was appointed vice chair to the European Commission High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence.But what is most interesting to this topic is that he is also an advisor to the Computational Sustainability Network, a network of 13 universities in the US, who try to discover computing methods that can applied to sustainability challenges including conservation, poverty mitigation and renewable energy. Furthermore, Barry is a Carrigtwohill man and the site that Indaver are proposing to build an incinerator on is not far from his home so I wanted to hear his personal opinions as well.And so, in this episode I chat with Barry about population growth, why I'm wrong about my perception of the world, gamification, the sustainable development goals, self-driving cars, social dividends and retrospective negligence. Hopefully, it will all make sense in the end...

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