Join our working group collaboration and this competition to model and foster global cooperation on climate change.
Collaborate with computer scientists, economists, climate, behavioral scientists, legal, ethics, and policy experts.
Get started and learn more Register yourself to get involved!
Climate change is happening fast. The latest IPCC report warns that it is ‘now or never’ if the world is to stave off climate disaster. However, it is still a race we can win, capping the global temperature increase at 2 degrees Celsius.
To mitigate climate change, we need comprehensive long-term global cooperation. This poses a complex game-theoretic problem. There is no central entity that forces regions to adhere to climate agreements, while regions have individual policy objectives that are often misaligned.
Design multilateral negotiation protocols and agreements that incentivize cooperation on climate change.
Test your solutions in RICE-N: a climate-economic simulation with AI agents that has been calibrated to real-world data.
The simulation features investing, mitigation actions, international trade, tariffs, negotiation, agreements, and more!
To learn more, check out how to get started!
Building solutions for climate change is an interdisciplinary challenge: involving machine learning, economics, agent-based modeling, game theory, political science, behavioral science, mathematics, and other disciplines.
Join our working group and competition to contribute your expertise!
Good policy recommendations require rigorous and grounded technical work. Here are just a few examples of how you can contribute!
Good science needs to be translated into good policy. Domain expertise (outside of AI, economics, or climate science) is crucial to help shape the analysis and communication of the results.
First of all, come learn and innovate! We want to motivate you to do original research in this scientific area. Our competition is a way to test and compare your ideas. Our jury will also provide feedback on your solutions and ideas.
We will organize a workshop in December 2022. Top performing teams will be invited to present their work there. We also invite all teams to submit a workshop-style paper to document their findings, which will be peer-reviewed and published in the competition proceedings. Check out our schedule to learn more!
We plan to write a research paper based on the findings in the competition, coauthored by the working group. We will invite teams as coauthors whose findings are of sufficient scientific or policymaking novelty. This work will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. This work will also be reviewed for ethical use.
Given sufficient findings, we intend to write a policy brief with actionable insights for policymakers. This brief will be distributed and promoted through our partners. We also plan to organize a marketing campaign, e.g., through blogs and press releases around the findings of the competition.
Date | Time | Link | |
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Talks | TBD | Virtual (link TBC) | |
Office hours | September 1 - February 15, 2022 | Mondays 9 am PST | Virtual (link TBC) |
Last date for registration and submissions | February 15, 2023 | Anywhere-on-Earth | |
Peer review | February 16 - March 9, 2023 | ||
Closing event (invited talks, team presentations, workshop papers, future work) | March 2023, date TBD | Virtual (link TBC) |
Track 1: Score-based | Track 2: Score and real-world relevance | Track 3: Critiques and improvements | |
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What do you do? |
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In this track, you will argue why your solution is practically relevant and usable in the real world. As we aim to bring the insights from the competition to policymakers, we expect the entries in this track to contain a high-level summary for policymakers. |
We strive to closely simulate real-world dynamics. But, no simulator is perfect. Thus, we invite you to point out potential improvements and loopholes. |
What do you submit? |
Each submission should have the following:
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In addition to the requirements in Track 1, you should also submit a written summary, justification, and explanation of your solution and insights. Your write-up should argue why your solution is feasible, technically sound, and attractive. For instance, from a game-theoretical perspective, good multilateral agreements might punish free-riders and might have to ensure that it’s difficult to “game” agreements with unrealistic behaviours. Please see the submission guidelines for a template submission with suggestions for aspects to discuss. |
This is a free-form submission: you may include a write-up, example code, or other ways to demonstrate your insights. |
How do we evaluate? |
Each team's solution is scored by computing the hypervolume enclosed by your 10 most recent solutions. This is an lower-bound approximation of the area under the Pareto curve defined by your submitted solutions. Participants in Track 1 are not required to submit a technical report. However, we will invite the top scorers in Track 1 to write a technical report to be published in the Proceedings. |
An expert jury will review your submission and use a scoring rubric to evaluate your solution. They will also assess the real-world relevancy and impact of your proposed solution. |
An expert jury will review your submission and evaluate the significance of your suggested improvements and/or discoveries. |
Guidelines |
Submission guidelines, evaluation rubrics, and suggested discussion topics. |
Submission guidelines and suggested topics to investigate. | |
Submit here! |
Track 1: Score-based | |
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What do you do? |
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What do you submit? |
Each submission should have the following:
|
How do we evaluate? |
Each team's solution is scored by computing the hypervolume enclosed by your 10 most recent solutions. This is an lower-bound approximation of the area under the Pareto curve defined by your submitted solutions. Participants in Track 1 are not required to submit a technical report. However, we will invite the top scorers in Track 1 to write a technical report to be published in the Proceedings. |
Guidelines | |
Submit here! |
Track 2: Score and real-world relevance | |
---|---|
What do you do? |
In this track, you will argue why your solution is practically relevant and usable in the real world. As we aim to bring the insights from the competition to policymakers, we expect the entries in this track to contain a high-level summary for policymakers. |
What do you submit? |
In addition to the requirements in Track 1, you should also submit a written summary, justification, and explanation of your solution and insights. Your write-up should argue why your solution is feasible, technically sound, and attractive. For instance, from a game-theoretical perspective, good multilateral agreements might punish free-riders and might have to ensure that it’s difficult to “game” agreements with unrealistic behaviours. Please see the submission guidelines for a template submission with suggestions for aspects to discuss. |
How do we evaluate? |
An expert jury will review your submission and use a scoring rubric to evaluate your solution. They will also assess the real-world relevancy and impact of your proposed solution. |
Guidelines |
Submission guidelines, evaluation rubrics, and suggested discussion topics. |
Submit here! |
Track 3: Critiques and improvements | |
---|---|
What do you do? |
We strive to closely simulate real-world dynamics. But, no simulator is perfect. Thus, we invite you to point out potential improvements and loopholes. |
What do you submit? |
This is a free-form submission: you may include a write-up, example code, or other ways to demonstrate your insights. |
How do we evaluate? | An expert jury will review your submission and evaluate the significance of your suggested improvements and/or discoveries. |
Guidelines | Submission guidelines and suggested topics to investigate. |
Submit here! |
Schedule a virtual meeting with us for Q&A, technical support, and more!
How do I customize the simulation and submit solutions?
Check out the technical FAQ on Github.
Where can I ask questions?
We will announce news and updates in two ways: our Google Group and Slack (channel: #ai-for-global-climate-cooperation-competition). For Chinese users, it is optional to
connect to our Official WeChat Account and leave comments here:
How can I find other people interested in the competition?
Find team members on Slack in #ai-for-global-climate-cooperation-competition-team-search!
While the intention of this paper and the corresponding challenge is to stimulate innovative solutions to climate change, there are some unintended consequences that we would like to acknowledge and address here. These include the carbon footprint of running the simulation itself, the economic disparities that can exist with climate negotiations, and the potential extensibility of this simulation to the real world.
First, it is important to acknowledge that running climate change simulations in RICE-N will inevitably release carbon emissions into our atmosphere. While the computational requirements of these simulations are much smaller than training large language models, they still exist. To mitigate this harm, we are encouraging participating teams to consider their energy use during experimentation, offsetting their own carbon emissions if possible.
Second, as the World Bank states "Climate change is deeply intertwined with global patterns of inequality" and yet "the most vulnerable are often also disproportionately impacted by measures to address climate change". While it is important to determine ways to mitigate climate change it is equally important to ensure that vulnerable populations are not negatively impacted by climate change measures.
Last but not least, it is important to note that the climate and economic predictions made in RICE-N may differ in a real-world setting due to externalities beyond the boundaries of the simulation. A fictional world is utilized in this competition to further illustrate the potential gap between simulation and reality, but the uncertainty of the results should be fully understood, especially before implementing any policies recommended by RICE-N.