AI for Sustainability Transformations
01 Mission
The AI for Sustainability Transformations Project exists to explore how generative AI is reshaping the conditions for learning, decision-making and collective action in a time of profound ecological and societal instability. As these technologies rapidly influence how we think, connect and act, they raise urgent ethical questions and practical challenges for those working in sustainability transformations. Our mission is to ensure that engagement with AI does not drift from these commitments, but instead deepens and advances them.
Building on earlier phases that established a shared ethical compass and mapped the landscape of emerging tools, the project is now focused on translating transformative values into everyday AI practice. In collaboration with Mútua Technologies, Metarelational Tech, and the Sustainable Impact Foundation, TC is advancing an ambitious agenda of inquiry and experimentation throughout 2026. Through transdisciplinary research, community engagement and creative exploration, we are developing a pattern language of effective and responsible AI use, grounded in practitioner experience and designed to generate practical wisdom for real-world application.
We will then be co-designing tools and services that bring this pattern language to life, creating tangible value for practitioners while fostering accountability and shared learning. By convening a vibrant Community of Practice and an external Expert Council in parallel with this work, the project aims to cultivate a living ecosystem of knowledge, experimentation, and stewardship. Together, we seek to shape how AI is used in sustainability transformations in ways that are ethical, grounded, and generative of meaningful change.
02 Team
Rimaz Mohamed
AI Fellow
ALEX TVEIT
AI Fellow
03 Community Spotlight
Our AI Community Spotlight highlights transdisciplinary researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of AI, sustainability transformations, and complex real-world challenges.
Dr. Theresa Züger
Theresa Züger is an interdisciplinary researcher in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). She heads the AI & Society Lab at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on the theory and practices of AI aiming to serve the public interest.
Silvia ferretti
Silva Ferretti is an independent consultant working across humanitarian, development, and peace sectors. She blends creativity, data visualization, and AI to leverage deep change—embracing complexity through curiosity, accountability, learning, and a culture of fresh thinking.
Scott Chaplowe
Scott Chaplowe is an international evaluation strategist advancing sustainable development through systems thinking, capacity development, and evidence use—bridging practice and policy across global initiatives, foundations, and crisis-affected settings. He is a learner and user of AI.
04 Practice Lab
Following the April kickoff sessions, the TCAI Practice Lab is now continuing as an ongoing peer-learning and inquiry space for transformation practitioners exploring how AI is reshaping sustainability transformation work.
The Lab is designed as a cumulative journey rather than a set of stand-alone events. Each session builds on the last, helping participants develop shared language, practical insight, and collective wisdom around AI practice for sustainability transformations.
Participants are encouraged to join regularly, contribute examples from their own work, and help shape a broader understanding of effective, ethical, and context-sensitive AI use.
Upcoming Practice Lab Sessions
Session 2: Mapping a Real Workflow • Tuesday 2 June, 16:00 CEST
What do we actually do as practitioners, and where do different kinds of intelligence matter?
Participants will be asked to bring a real workflow or recurring activity from their day-to-day work. That could include regular sensemaking activities and staying on top of developments in their field, team coordination, planning events, synthesising reports, or more technical work like systems mapping or facilitation.
Together, we will map our workflows step by step and identify where human capacities such as judgment, relational thinking, collective sensemaking, tacit or embodied knowledge, creativity, and discernment matter most. The aim is not to advocate for AI adoption, but to develop a more nuanced understanding of how different kinds of work and intelligence interact.
Session 3: Exploring AI Augmentation and Its Limits • Tuesday 23 June, 16:00 CEST
Where could AI help — and where shouldn’t it?
Building on the workflows mapped in Session 2, we will explore where AI tools or AI-supported processes could potentially augment parts of the workflow.
This includes identifying possible AI interventions, exploring existing tools or examples, discussing risks and unintended consequences, and naming which parts of the workflow participants do not want to augment — and why.
The session will also consider questions of dependency, deskilling, loss of tacit knowledge, trust, and democratic legitimacy.
Session 4: Reflection, Implementation, and Ethical Consideration • Tuesday 14 July, 16:00 CEST
Should we actually do this?
This session creates space to reflect more deeply on the implications of the augmented workflows explored in the previous sessions.
Participants will consider what it would realistically take to implement these changes, what forms of trust or organizational buy-in would be needed, what safeguards may be necessary, and how these choices sit ethically and politically.
The session will invite participants to reflect not only on what AI can do, but on what kinds of practice we want to cultivate.
Session 5: Documenting and Sharing Emerging AI Practices • Tuesday 11 August, 16:00 CEST
This session will focus on exploring and organizing emerging examples of AI use in transformation practice.
Participants will collaboratively examine relevant cases, reports, tools, and practitioner examples to identify recurring tensions, promising practices, and unresolved questions. Together, we will experiment with lightweight ways of collecting, tagging, synthesizing, and making sense of these materials, while also reflecting critically on what kinds of knowledge work should — and should not — be augmented by AI.
Session 6: Exploring and Organising Emerging Insights • Tuesday 1 September, 16:00 CEST
Participants will take ownership of one or two source texts from the shared knowledge base and come together in small pods to identify, discuss, and organise recurring themes, tensions, and examples.
This session will help the group begin making sense of what is emerging across the knowledge base, while connecting external insights back to participants’ own practices and questions.
Session 7: Surfacing and Refining Emerging Patterns • Tuesday 22 September, 16:00 CEST
This hands-on session will focus on documenting, refining, and connecting potential patterns of practice that may contribute to the broader AI4ST pattern language.
Participants will work together to identify what kinds of AI use appear effective, context-sensitive, ethically grounded, and relevant to sustainability transformation practice.
05 Past Workshops
Ghost in the Manuscript: Exploring Authorship and AI Using NotebookLM
On July 15th, 2025, our workshop explored how NotebookLM, Google’s AI “research assistant,” impacts authorship, agency, and knowledge creation. With guest critic Ollie Bream McIntosh, we examined the tension between AI enhancing research and diminishing our critical capacities. Participants highlighted the risk of AI tools like NotebookLM bypassing the creative “human struggle” in learning and stressed the need for a shared vocabulary in AI discourse. The workshop prompted us to reconsider our relationship with AI as a relational partner – one of many “nodes of intelligence in a reciprocal web of life” reshaping human knowledge.
Can AI Build Trust and Hold Space? A Workshop with Harmonica
On June 17th, 2025, we tested Harmonica — a generative AI tool for collaborative sensemaking. Participants explored its AI-assisted chat, surfaced ethical tensions, and reimagined AI as a sparring partner for collaboration. Our sounding board — Silva Ferretti, Scott Chaplowe, and Harmonica’s founder Artem Zhiganov — nudged the conversation further into the future of AI in collaboration.
Navigating AI With Purpose
On May 6th, 2025, we explored the ethical challenges of using AI in sustainability transformations, emphasizing the need for community-driven, locally tailored approaches. Engaging with our AI Ethics Manifesto, participants reflected on real-world ethical dilemmas and potential pathways to guide more responsible and equitable AI use in our collective transformation efforts.