In the collection of the Getty museum in Los Angeles is a portrait from the 17th century of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid: disheveled, holding up sheets of Elements, his treatise on geometry, with grimy hands.

For more than 2,000 years, Euclids text was the paradigm of mathematical argumentation and reasoning. Euclid famously starts with definitions that are almost poetic, Jeremy Avigad, a logician at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an email. He then built the mathematics of the time on top of that, proving things in such a way that each successive step clearly follows from previous ones, using the basic notions, definitions and prior theorems. There were complaints that some of Euclids obvious steps were less than obvious, Dr. Avigad said, yet the system worked.

But by the 20th century, mathematicians were no longer willing to ground mathematics in this intuitive geometric foundation. Instead they developed formal systems precise symbolic representations, mechanical rules. Eventually, this formalization allowed mathematics to be translated into computer code. In 1976, the four-color theorem which states that four colors are sufficient to fill a map so that no two adjacent regions are the same color became the first major theorem proved with the help of computational brute force.

Now mathematicians are grappling with the latest transformative force: artificial intelligence.

In 2019, Christian Szegedy, a computer scientist formerly at Google and now at a start-up in the Bay Area, predicted that a computer system would match or exceed the problem-solving ability of the best human mathematicians within a decade. Last year he revised the target date to 2026.

Akshay Venkatesh, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a winner of the Fields Medal in 2018, isnt currently interested in using A.I., but he is keen on talking about it. I want my students to realize that the field theyre in is going to change a lot, he said in an interview last year. He recently added by email: I am not opposed to thoughtful and deliberate use of technology to support our human understanding. But I strongly believe that mindfulness about the way we use it is essential.

In February, Dr. Avigad attended a workshop about machine-assisted proofs at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. (He visited the Euclid portrait on the final day of the workshop.) The gathering drew an atypical mix of mathematicians and computer scientists. It feels consequential, said Terence Tao, a mathematician at the university, winner of a Fields Medal in 2006 and the workshops lead organizer.

Dr. Tao noted that only in the last couple years have mathematicians started worrying about A.I.s potential threats, whether to mathematical aesthetics or to themselves. That prominent community members are now broaching the issues and exploring the potential kind of breaks the taboo, he said.

One conspicuous workshop attendee sat in the front row: a trapezoidal box named raise-hand robot that emitted a mechanical murmur and lifted its hand whenever an online participant had a question. It helps if robots are cute and nonthreatening, Dr. Tao said.

These days there is no shortage of gadgetry for optimizing our lives diet, sleep, exercise. We like to attach stuff to ourselves to make it a little easier to get things right, Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during a workshop break. A.I. gadgetry might do the same for mathematics, he added: Its very clear that the question is, What can machines do for us, not what will machines do to us.

One math gadget is called a proof assistant, or interactive theorem prover. (Automath was an early incarnation in the 1960s.) Step-by-step, a mathematician translates a proof into code; then a software program checks whether the reasoning is correct. Verifications accumulate in a library, a dynamic canonical reference that others can consult. This type of formalization provides a foundation for mathematics today, said Dr. Avigad, who is the director of the Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics (funded by the crypto entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson), in just the same way that Euclid was trying to codify and provide a foundation for the mathematics of his time.

Of late, the open-source proof assistant system Lean is attracting attention. Developed at Microsoft by Leonardo de Moura, a computer scientist now with Amazon, Lean uses automated reasoning, which is powered by what is known as good old-fashioned artificial intelligence, or GOFAI symbolic A.I., inspired by logic. So far the Lean community has verified an intriguing theorem about turning a sphere inside out as well as a pivotal theorem in a scheme for unifying mathematical realms, among other gambits.

But a proof assistant also has drawbacks: It often complains that it does not understand the definitions, axioms or reasoning steps entered by the mathematician, and for this it has been called a proof whiner. All that whining can make research cumbersome. But Heather Macbeth, a mathematician at Fordham University, said that this same feature providing line-by-line feedback also makes the systems useful for teaching.

In the spring, Dr. Macbeth designed a bilingual course: She translated every problem presented on the blackboard into Lean code in the lecture notes, and students submitted solutions to homework problems both in Lean and prose. It gave them confidence, Dr. Macbeth said, because they received instant feedback on when the proof was finished and whether each step along the way was right or wrong.

Since attending the workshop, Emily Riehl, a mathematician at Johns Hopkins University, used an experimental proof-assistant program to formalize proofs she had previously published with a co-author. By the end of a verification, she said, Im really, really deep into understanding the proof, way deeper than Ive ever understood before. Im thinking so clearly that I can explain it to a really dumb computer.

Another automated-reasoning tool, used by Marijn Heule, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and an Amazon scholar, is what he colloquially calls brute reasoning (or, more technically, a Satisfiability, or SAT, solver). By merely stating, with a carefully crafted encoding, which exotic object you want to find, he said, a supercomputer network churns through a search space and determines whether or not that entity exists.

Just before the workshop, Dr. Heule and one of his Ph.D. students, Bernardo Subercaseaux, finalized their solution to a longstanding problem with a file that was 50 terabytes in size. Yet that file hardly compared with a result that Dr. Heule and collaborators produced in 2016: Two-hundred-terabyte maths proof is largest ever, a headline in Nature announced. The article went on to ask whether solving problems with such tools truly counted as math. In Dr. Heules view, this approach is needed to solve problems that are beyond what humans can do.

Another set of tools uses machine learning, which synthesizes oodles of data and detects patterns but is not good at logical, step-by-step reasoning. Googles DeepMind designs machine-learning algorithms to tackle the likes of protein folding (AlphaFold) and winning at chess (AlphaZero). In a 2021 Nature paper, a team described their results as advancing mathematics by guiding human intuition with A.I.

Yuhuai Tony Wu, a computer scientist formerly at Google and now with a start-up in the Bay Area, has outlined a grander machine-learning goal: to solve mathematics. At Google, Dr. Wu explored how the large language models that empower chatbots might help with mathematics. The team used a model that was trained on internet data and then fine-tuned on a large math-rich data set, using, for instance, an online archive of math and science papers. When asked in everyday English to solve math problems, this specialized chatbot, named Minerva, was pretty good at imitating humans, Dr. Wu said at the workshop. The model obtained scores that were better than an average 16-year-old student on high school math exams.

Ultimately, Dr. Wu said, he envisioned an automated mathematician that has the capability of solving a mathematical theorem all by itself.

Mathematicians have responded to these disruptions with varying levels of concern.

Michael Harris, at Columbia University, expresses qualms in his Silicon Reckoner Substack. He is troubled by the potentially conflicting goals and values of research mathematics and the tech and defense industries. In a recent newsletter, he noted that one speaker at a workshop, A.I. to Assist Mathematical Reasoning, organized by the National Academies of Sciences, was a representative from Booz Allen Hamilton, a government contractor for intelligence agencies and the military.

Dr. Harris lamented the lack of discussion about the larger implications of A.I. on mathematical research, particularly when contrasted with the very lively conversation going on about the technology pretty much everywhere except mathematics.

Geordie Williamson, of the University of Sydney and a DeepMind collaborator, spoke at the N.A.S. gathering and encouraged mathematicians and computer scientists to be more involved in such conversations. At the workshop in Los Angeles, he opened his talk with a line adapted from You and the Atom Bomb, a 1945 essay by George Orwell. Given how likely we all are to be profoundly affected within the next five years, Dr. Williamson said, deep learning has not roused as much discussion as might have been expected.

Dr. Williamson considers mathematics a litmus test of what machine learning can or cannot do. Reasoning is quintessential to the mathematical process, and it is the crucial unsolved problem of machine learning.

Early during Dr. Williamsons DeepMind collaboration, the team found a simple neural net that predicted a quantity in mathematics that I cared deeply about, he said in an interview, and it did so ridiculously accurately. Dr. Williamson tried hard to understand why that would be the makings of a theorem but could not. Neither could anybody at DeepMind. Like the ancient geometer Euclid, the neural net had somehow intuitively discerned a mathematical truth, but the logical why of it was far from obvious.

At the Los Angeles workshop, a prominent theme was how to combine the intuitive and the logical. If A.I. could do both at the same time, all bets would be off.

But, Dr. Williamson observed, there is scant motivation to understand the black box that machine learning presents. Its the hackiness culture in tech, where if it works most of the time, thats great, he said but that scenario leaves mathematicians dissatisfied.

He added that trying to understand what goes on inside a neural net raises fascinating mathematical questions, and that finding answers presents an opportunity for mathematicians to contribute meaningfully to the world.

Read more:
A.I. Is Coming for Mathematics, Too - The New York Times

Sleep is of utmost importance for our overall well-being and health. It plays a crucial role in various aspects of our lives, including cognitive function, mental well-being, and physical health. But for many, finding restful sleep can be a challenge. Occasionally, some individuals may even find themselves going without sleep for consecutive days, which can have significant impacts on their health. This led us to wonder how exactly your mind and body can be affected if you do not sleep for three days in a row!

We reached out to experts who delved deeper into the same. Three days without sleep causes major changes in a persons health and body as well as a number of harmful impacts. Sleep deprivation can have both short-term and long-term effects. It affects both physical health and mental health of the person in a number of ways, Dr Vipul Gupta, chief, Neurointerventional Surgery, and co-chief, Stroke Unit, Artemis Hospital, Gurugram said.

Agreeing, Dr Suresh Ramasubban, consultant, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and in-charge of Intensive Care Unit and Sleep Lab, Apollo Multispeciality Hospital, said that the impacts of sleep deprivation can become evident in most individuals within a mere 24 hours. However, when one goes without sleep for a continuous period of 72 hours or three days, the symptoms of deprivation and fatigue intensify even further, he added.

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The consequences of staying awake for such an extended period can have profound effects on a persons mood and cognitive abilities. Sleep deprivation has become a prevalent issue among students and professionals, with many facing its challenges. Even as doctors, we are restricted from working for more than a 24-hour shift due to the potential for errors. Engaging in repetitive tasks during prolonged wakefulness becomes hazardous, as logical reasoning, mathematics, and other cognitive functions are impaired, he said.

Some of the effects resulting from this level of sleep deprivation include extreme fatigue, difficulty in multitasking, significant challenges in concentration and memory retention, feelings of paranoia, a depressed mood, and difficulties in interpersonal communication. It is crucial to recognise that chronic sleep deprivation can have enduring implications for an individuals overall health. Such effects may include increased susceptibility to conditions like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, and depression, Dr Ramasubban said.

The expert further shared that the effects of sleep deprivation can be particularly hard on respiratory physiology. Our body and brain stem fail to recognize a decrease in oxygen levels and an increase in carbon dioxide levels. This condition is known as a depressed ventilatory response to low oxygen and high carbon dioxide, and individuals with lung diseases may experience worsened symptoms as a result, he said.

As for mental health, sleep is a phase when the brain forms connections or synapses which help us in forming memory, Dr Kapil Singhal, director, Neurology, Fortis Hospital, Noida said. As such, poor sleep can impair our ability to remember. It can lead to mood swings, irritability, and anger issues which negatively impact our day-to-day working. It can even lead to hallucinations if sleep loss is prolonged and will lead to a negative impact on physical health. Sleep is as essential for the brain as food and oxygen for living, he said.

However, there can be various reasons why someone may not end up sleeping for 2-3 days at a stretch. It could be due to underlying medical conditions like insomnia, anxiety, or sleep disorders. External factors such as high-stress levels, work or study demands, jet lag, or unhealthy sleep habits can also contribute to prolonged sleeplessness. Whatever the reason may be, going without sleep for three consecutive days accumulates a substantial sleep debt.

While catching up on sleep is undoubtedly essential, it is not the only solution. The most effective approach is to strive for a healthier and more balanced lifestyle, Dr Ramasubban said.

Dr Singhal said if a person ends up having a prolonged sleep loss, s/he should avoid using stimulants like caffeine, and tea. A short relaxing sleep can also be helpful. One should fall back to his usual sleep pattern as soon as possible. Light exercises and mind relaxation techniques like meditation can also be helpful, he said.

To ensure proper sleep amid a hectic schedule, it is important to prioritise and establish a consistent sleep routine. By following these steps, you can optimise your experience and improve your chances of achieving restful sleep:

*Set a regular sleep schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same time every day.*Create a conducive sleep environment that is cool, dark, and quiet.*Avoid stimulating activities, caffeine, and electronic devices close to bedtime.*Practice relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing or meditation, to unwind before sleep.*Regular exercise and a balanced diet can also promote better sleep.

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First published on: 03-07-2023 at 12:30 IST

Read more from the original source:
What happens to your mind and body when you dont sleep for 3 days? - The Indian Express

Sam Altman, the CEO ofOpenAI, recently said that Chinashould play a key role in shaping the guardrails that are placed around the technology.

China has some of the best AI talent in the world, Altmansaid during a talk at theBeijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) last week. Solving alignment for advanced AI systems requires some of the best minds from around the worldand so I really hope that Chinese AI researchers will make great contributions here.

Altman is in a good position to opine on these issues. His company is behindChatGPT, the chatbot thats shown the world how rapidly AI capabilities are progressing. Such advances have led scientists and technologists to call for limits on the technology. In March, many expertssigned an open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of AI algorithms more powerful than those behind ChatGPT. Last month, executives including Altman and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, signed a statementwarning that AI might someday pose an existential risk comparable to nuclear war or pandemics.

Such statements, often signed by executives working on the very technology they are warning could kill us, can feel hollow. For some, they also miss the point. Many AI experts say it is more important to focus on the harms AI can already cause byamplifying societal biases and facilitating thespread of misinformation.

BAAI chair Zhang Hongjiang told me that AI researchers in China are also deeply concerned about new capabilities emerging in AI.I really think that [Altman] is doing humankind a service by making this tour, by talking to various governments and institutions, he said.

Zhang said that a number of Chinese scientists, including the director of the BAAI, had signed the letter calling for a pause in the development of more powerful AI systems, but he pointed out that the BAAI has long been focused onmore immediate AI risks. New developments in AI mean we will definitely have more efforts working on AI alignment,Zhang said. But he added that the issue is tricky because smarter models can actually make things safer.

Altman was not the only Western AI expert to attend the BAAI conference.

Excerpt from:
Good News! China and the US Are Talking About AI Dangers - WIRED

The USDA-funded Secure Water Future (SWF) team at UC Merced believes that to fully understand water, you must do more than just study this vital resource. You must immerse yourself in it - sometimes, literally.

A recent trip to Utah that culminated in rafting The Gates of Lodore on the Green River allowed student participants to both learn about and experience water, in all its forms. This was the second year for this trip, and thanks to this winter's heavy and lengthy snowfall, students got to see the solid form of water, as well.

"We were able to both snowshoe and raft, giving us a really interesting perspective," said Sarah Naumes, managing director of SWF.

Students, who came from UC Merced, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Utah State University and New Mexico State University, learned from subject experts and mentors who attended parts of the trip. They observed a new irrigation system at a Utah farm. And, of course, they rafted down the Green River for four days. Thirteen graduate students and one undergraduate student intern took part.

"I had a lot of opportunity to learn and talk about my research, which is such good training in scientific communication," said UC Merced student Liying Li. She added that she was surprised by the quality of the trip, as well as "the power of returning to nature and thinking to ourselves, and the inspiration from communicating with mentors and peers of different backgrounds."

UC Davis student Yara Pasner also took part.

"It was a fantastic trip," Pasner said. "I learned a lot about the Green River, the Great Salt Lake, and about Utah agriculture and water management. It was an incredibly diverse group of students, and the programming was educational, inclusive, positive and seamless."

UC Merced postdoctoral fellowEmily Waring was impressed with the variety of topics covered.

"The trip was FULL of activities and bonding," she said. "Everyone learned so much about rivers and also from the participants and mentors, who were from many disciplines."

Waring she said she was surprised to learn how differently water is managed in Utah compared to California.

According to its website, the SWF team's mission is "to understand, enable, and envision water management strategies, empowered through data-enabled decision-making, for agricultural and ecological systems. The transdisciplinary team works with growers, irrigation districts, and ecosystem managers to adopt and adapt climate resilience strategies, train the next generation of transdisciplinary practitioners, and produce an online dashboard for data-driven decision-making."

Events like this Climate Adaptation Science Academy Experiential Learning Expedition (CASA ELE) equip student researchers to meet that mission both through the information provided and the opportunity to connect with other researchers doing similar work. This kind of research can be isolating, and those who joined in the expedition formed relationships with their peers that likely will be long-lasting and fruitful, organizers said.

Li said the trip was well-organized and "created a culture for everyone to support and help each other."

Pasner said she was surprised at how "emotionally intelligent" the experience was.

"The mentors were open to any question, personal or professional," she said. "I was able to ask top-level Utah water administrators and professors how they deal with sexism in the workplace as a woman - and I got real answers. The psychologist on the trip (David Meyer) provided invaluable mentorship on how to allow this trip to fill my emotional battery, and how to spread that sense of peace into the rest of the world. The trip challenged me as a person to use my heart and mind to consider water challenges and solutions with expertise and empathy."

Naumes said the feedback received so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

"Students said they felt reinvigorated, and reconnected with what they are studying."

Pasner echoed that sentiment.

"This trip is a unicorn," she said. "I've come away from this trip with newfound optimism about working in academics. This trip treated us like future leaders. I feel empowered and proud to be part of the Secure Water Future community."

Secure Water Future will host a UC Water Academy on wildfire and water in August for UC graduate students. Next year, CASA ELE will travel to New Mexico.

Excerpt from:
Water Research Goes Deep with Rafting Trip to Utah | Newsroom - University of California, Merced

Few people know the deep ocean as intimately as Lisa Levin, an ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Not content with doing pure science, Levin, who has participated in more than 40 oceanographic expeditions, co-founded the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative, a global network of more than 2,000 scientists, economists, and legal experts that seeks to advise policymakers on managing the oceans depths.

Of particular concern to Levin now is the prospect of deep-sea mining. The tiny island nation of Nauru has notified the International Seabed Authority on behalf of its Canadian partner, the Metals Company, of its intent to seek a permit to mine in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a 1.7- million-square-mile region of the Pacific where polymetatallic nodules are scattered that have high concentrations of cobalt and other valuable minerals.

The ISA, formed by the U.N. in 1994, is required to issue mining codes that would regulate deep-sea mining by July 9. If it fails to do so, some scientists and environmentalists fear that an controversial rule may allow mining to begin nonetheless. While Levin told Yale Environment 360 that she doubts well see it happen this year, she too worries that pressure is mounting to start mining soon.

Mining companies argue that land-based sources for these metals are running out and that they are critically needed for green technologies like producing batteries for electric vehicles and manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines. They also claim that mining in the deep sea will be less environmentally damaging than land-based mining.

In an interview with e360, Levin disagreed. Its a highly destructive process, she said. People talk about sustainable mining. I think its an oxymoron in the deep sea. But society has to decide should we do it, and is it worth the cost?

Levin collects a rock gathered by a remotely operated vehicle. Courtesy of the Schmidt Ocean Institute

Yale Environment 360: The deep sea is viewed by many as a kind of watery desert. There may be a few creatures floating around down there, but people dont think of it as a thriving ecosystem. Is that just wrong?

Lisa Levin: There are actually surprisingly diverse and rich ecosystems, but sometimes the organisms are small, only a few millimeters in size. For example, in the nodule zone that theyre interested in mining, most of the animals are very, very small. We may think it is unpopulated, because we dont see many big charismatic organisms there.

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e360: People may say, This is a marginal area, why do we have to worry about it?

Levin: You could go to a very remote section of the Amazon rainforest that nobody has explored and say, Why is it important? There are actually many parallels with the rainforest. One is that the animals in the deep sea can live for a very long time. Some fish can live for hundreds of years. Some of the invertebrates, like corals or sponges, live for thousands of years.

Like the rainforest, the deep sea is also extremely vulnerable to physical disturbance. Once the ocean bottom is hit by a trawl [fishing] net, youve lost four or five thousand years of life for many corals and sponges. Around 15 percent of our continental margins have already been trawled, leaving vast piles of rubble where deep sea corals once thrived.

e360: There has been talk of deep-sea mining for decades now. But it hasnt started yet. Some believe that deep-sea mining may begin as early as this summer, if the ISA does not meet the July deadline for finalizing its rules for environmental regulation. Do you share the concerns that mining is imminent?

Levin: The only operation that could start mining very soon is the Metals Company and Nauru. I dont know the state of their technology, but I would guess that they are not ready for large-scale mining at this point. I doubt that they would be in the water mining commercially this year [even if the ISA gives them approval].

e360: Still, we appear to be edging ever closer to seabed mining. Do we know enough yet to start doing that?

Levin: In fact, we know very little about what the impacts of deep-sea mining will be. Weve probably mapped 20 to 25 percent of the ocean floor, but weve only studied the ecology of a small fraction of that. We need to know whats there in terms of species, and we need to know what well lose if we destroy these areas by mining. We also need to know what genetic resources are there, what fisheries services will be lost, how much carbon is sequestered. But we simply dont have that knowledge yet.

Mining exploration areas, in red, in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Horizon

e360: The industry argues that they can mine with minimal impact. Are they wrong?

Levin: Its a highly destructive process. People talk about sustainable mining. I think its an oxymoron in the deep sea. But society has to decide should we do it, and is it worth the cost? At the moment, there are 15 to 20 governments that have advocated for a moratorium [on deep-sea mining]. But there are 167 member states in the ISA. We dont know yet what they will decide.

e360: Some mining companies say that metals from the ocean floor are needed for the rapid expansion of green technologies. They also claim that deep-sea mining is less destructive than land mining. Is there a green argument for this?

Levin: Land mining is very destructive. But the footprint is much, much smaller. I mean the largest coal mine in Germany is less than half the size of the area that would be mined for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in one year by one contractor.

The nodules are concentrated in a thin layer at the top of the seabed only 4 inches deep. So you are talking about stripping the sea bottom of many, many thousands of square miles potentially. The same with the seamounts [undersea mountains], which are also targeted. Their ferro-manganese crusts are only a few centimeters thick, so they have to tear up [large areas to mine] this superficial feature.

e360: Another area that has been targeted for mining is hydrothermal vents [fissures on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges].

Levin: Thats right, there are ISA exploration contracts on the mid-Atlantic Ocean ridge and the southwest Indian Ocean ridge and there are also hundreds of claims that have been made in west Pacific island nations which have leased their waters for mining hydrothermal vents [which contain silver, gold, and other minerals]. The species that live there are highly adapted just to the vent ecosystems, and many are endemic and only live at a handful of vents, so there is concern that they run the risk of extinction.

e360: Youve said that oil and gas production is getting deeper and deeper. Is that a concern?

Levin: Were fishing ever deeper, and were also drilling ever deeper. Look at the Deepwater Horizon which blew out and spilled tremendous amounts of oil in the Gulf of Mexico at around 1,500 meters in 2010. It damaged an area where the biodiversity had not yet even been described by science.

A mining exploration vessel launches an underwater vehicle equipped to collect sediment from the sea bottom. Global Sea Mineral Resources

e360: One of the risks of deep-sea mining is that you will be stirring up the bottom sediment. Why is that a problem?

Levin: By mining the nodules, sediment plumes will be released that may impact large areas of the ocean. These particles in what is normally quite clear water can clog the feeding apparatus [of deepwater organisms]; it can be mistaken for food; it can release contaminants, radioactive and metal contaminants, as well as carbon. A lot of animals use bioluminescence to communicate, find mates, locate prey. These particles could change light transmission in the water and interfere with their ability to function.

The race for EV parts leads to risky deep-ocean mining. Read more.

And it is not just the resuspended particles [at the ocean bottom]. After the ore is removed from the sediment on the [mining] ship, they have what they call return water which will be full of particles and contaminants which have to be put down somewhere. Its not clear where that is going to go. That could impact vertically migrating fishes [higher up in the water column] in ways that can ultimately affect tuna and other important fisheries that exist in the area.

e360: A lot of carbon gets sequestered at the bottom of the sea. A recent study showed that bottom trawling [for fishing] releases as much carbon dioxide annually as global aviation. Is deep-sea mining likely to have a similar effect?

Levin: Probably not. Its hard to know. Bottom-trawling is usually on continental margins where the carbon accumulation rates are very high. Whereas in the abyssal plain [where the polymetallic nodules may be mined], the carbon content of that sediment is relatively low. So its hard to know if the amount of carbon released would have a big effect on the carbon cycle and our carbon budgets and CO2 emissions.

e360: There is the expression out of sight, out of mind. Why should people care about the deep sea, which few have seen and seems so remote from our lives?

Levin: We always have a very anthropocentric answer to that question. There is an existence value to knowing that this biodiversity is out there even if we are not using it. Why should people care? We should care because it is there. And it is relatively pristine compared to other ecosystems that we have on land.

There are also all the reasons having to do with global cycles, nutrient regeneration that allows the productivity for fisheries, all the carbon cycling that keeps the planet healthy. The ocean and the deep ocean take up most of the excess heat and about a third of the excess carbon dioxide. Our climate wouldnt be livable if we didnt have a healthy ocean doing all of that, and the life of the ocean is a big part of that cycle. There is also the future potential of the ocean to provide solutions to problems we already know about, like climate change, but also other problems that we dont have yet, like illnesses of the future that we will need solutions for.

We are at a really pivotal time. We still havent destroyed most of [the ocean ecosystem]. I think we can make good decisions going forward and keep a lot of it pristine and functional for the planet.

A large polymetallic nodule gathered from the seafloor. Global Sea Mineral Resources

e360: Who will be making these decisions?

Levin: One of the problems may be that there are so many different agencies, each with their own little niches of responsibility, but they are not always talking with each other, and they are making independent decisions. There are [international] conventions on biodiversity, and conventions that address climate, and conventions that address whales and whale conservation, and conventions that address endangered species, and some that do fishing they are all separate. And yet, they shouldnt be managed separately, because every single thing I mentioned is affected by every other thing I mentioned. It is all interconnected, and yet we dont manage it in any kind of interconnected way. That highly sectoral feature of the U.N. is really problematic for the ocean.

For your phone and EV, a cobalt supply chain to a hell on Earth. Read more.

e360: Are you hopeful nevertheless?

Levin: Im fairly hopeful. We have a lot of opportunities to make good policy. And I think there is increasing awareness. More people understand the critical role of the ocean now. The science is so much better than it used to be. There are many NGOs and science networks working for good decision-making. Its clear that interest in protecting the sea and the deep sea in particular is growing.

Read the original here:
Can We Mine the World's Deep Ocean Without Destroying It? - Yale Environment 360