ARTICLE: “Look beyond AI, Artificial Intelligence, to solve your problems” – (Asset Management BC Newsletter, Winter 2024)
Note to Reader:
Written by Kim Stephens, the feature article in the Fall 2024 issue of the Asset Management BC Newsletter is an interview with Michael Blackstock. It previews a new paradigm called Natural Intelligence. Michael Blackstock will build to this concept in his keynote address at the annual Asset Management BC conference in November 2024
Look beyond AI, Artificial Intelligence, to solve your problems
“Natural Intelligence, aka NI, has emerged from Blue Ecology which itself bridges Indigenous Wisdom and Western Science. Blue Ecology is about creating a new form of knowledge by interweaving useful threads from two cultures,” wrote Kim Stephens, Executive Director of the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC.
“At the Asset Management BC conference, Michael Blackstock understands that he will be speaking to an engineering-centric audience whose world revolves around numbers and inanimate objects such as pipes and pavement. Taking nature into account is not something that comes naturally to a municipal asset manager.”
Nature’s ecosystem engineers
“The system is not set up to teach engineers how to understand nature, unfortunately,” observes Michael Blackstock. “In my keynote, I will use three examples…ants, beavers and trees…to illustrate the potential for fusing Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence. Academics refer to ants and beavers as ecosystem engineers.”
“Look beyond AI to solve your problems. There is this vast amount of wisdom out there that Indigenous peoples have seen forever…and that is Natural Intelligence.”
TO LEARN MORE:
To read the complete article, download a copy of Look beyond AI, Artificial Intelligence, to solve your problems as published in the Fall 2024 issue of the Asset Management BC Newsletter.
