Can AI Help to Avert the Environmental Great Filter?

While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives is still evident on a daily basis, there is a much larger disaster looming in our future. We are faced with massive evidence that civilization is threatened by a climate disaster, and drastic measures are needed to avoid a point of no return. Will humankind succeed in adopting the necessary measures in time? In this essay, we explore the potential of present-day AI systems to mitigate the apparent human inability to respond timely and adequately to the imminent peril threatening the existence of our civilization. We will argue that contrary to focusing on the widespread concerns of AI superseding humanity, the role of AI in climate change solutions needs to be prioritized and appreciated. To illustrate the potential of AI, we first contemplate the suboptimal human response to the nonlinear dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis. Subsequently, we generalize our observations to the climate crisis.