4.4.4.6 Other domains where digital technologies can enable positive tipping

The three specific applications discussed so far illustrate how digital technologies can enable PTPs and act as multipliers of societal change in the context of the ASI framework. Importantly, digitalisation has myriad possible applications that can be utilised to accelerate socio-economic transformations towards a post-carbon, regenerative society. Indeed, similar dynamics to those described above could be discussed with respect to other sectors and applications. For instance, digital technologies can contribute to avoiding food waste (4.3.3.2) and improving sustainable consumer practices in the food sector – e.g. through digital provenance systems and blockchain-based certification. They can also avoid unnecessary energy demand (Wilson et al., 2020, also 4.3.2), promote pro-environmental behaviours as well as improved practices at the level of urban planning (Milojevic-Dupont and Creutzig, 2021) and favour asset sharing in freight transport (Box 4.3.4). In the supply side of the energy sector, digital technologies are necessary for the large-scale deployment of smart grids and the integration of prosumers – that is, actors that both consume and produce energy. Other instances in which digital technologies could enable PTPs include:

  1. Augmented democracy, where digitalisation can facilitate inclusive, democratic and yet expert-informed political decision making from local to global (Satorras et al., 2020; Wellings et al., 2023; Nisbett et al., 2022):
  2. Carbon/ecological footprint tracking for individuals, organisations and companies, potentially linked to bank accounts (e.g., NatWest Bank Carbon Footprint Tracker) and potentially augmented with conversational AI (Nerini et al., 2021; Wemyss et al., 2023; Nisbett and Spaiser 2023); 
  3. Digital twins simulations for sustainable city planning, traffic monitoring systems, manufacturing, green transition planning, etc. (Xia et al., 2022; Bauer et al., 2021). 

More generally, advances in digitalisation and AI can enhance our abilities to automate and optimise processes – e.g. coupling production processes such as green hydrogen production to fluctuating renewable energy production processes (Yang et al., 2022). The new generation of large-scale language models (LLMs, which underpin services like ChatGPT), combined with a human loop training iteration, can produce question-specific knowledge to citizens, starting from a curated compilation of the existing literature on planetary health and climate change (Debnath et al., 2023). 

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