AI for sustainability: A practical primer for business leaders

THE advent of generative AI has put businesses at the cusp of a new revolution. This AI can create new content using data that it has been trained on and is creating a big stir everywhere. All aspects of businesses, not least sustainability, will have to squarely face and leverage on the new possibilities brought forth by this AI.

For business leaders, using AI goes beyond knowing how to “prompt” or ask questions on generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT and DeepSeek. These chatbots have changed workplaces as they can tap on large language models (LLMs) or sophisticated AI technology that produces human-like text by being machine-trained on massive datasets.

For sustainability, leaders will need a broader appreciation, perhaps a quick road map to rapidly and inevitably leverage on AI for their businesses through and beyond the environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects.