Artificial Intelligence in the polycrisis: fueling or fighting flames?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly entangled with the polycrisis—persistent, interconnected disruptions shaping the Anthropocene. Using the Anthropocene Traps framework, we analyze 14 structural, self-reinforcing dynamics, revealing how AI both reinforces and potentially counteracts polycrisis. While AI may enhance information gathering, efficiency, and ecological research, it also intensifies growth-for-growth logics, infrastructure lock-ins, technological arms races, and biosphere disconnect. The ambivalence reflects AI’s deep embedding in institutional, economic, and normative structures that drive the polycrisis. Addressing these dynamics requires political reform and resilience strategies explicitly informed by the Anthropocene Traps framework.