The comic begins by defining what AI and sustainability are. There are many definitions of AI. While many in the general public associate it with the currently popular "large language models" (like ChatGPT), classic definitions of AI include a lot more human intelligence traits such as problem-solving, knowledge representation, reasoning, computer vision, and robotics (see this classic book for an overview). A more pragmatic view of AI is that it offers a toolbox of many algorithms that can be used for many different types of tasks, like learning relationships from sample data, forecasting and optimization.

Sustainability has many dimensions. However, three perspectives are usually distinguished: social, economic and environmental. A framework that describes concrete goals is the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations. You can explore the goals and possible actions here. In this comic, we focus on the environmental perspective. However, as discussed in this this report the three perspectives are actually all interconnected! Therefore, later in the comic (spoiler!), some of the economic and social dimensions will also be explored.