AI as a Force for Good: Lessons from COP28

At COP28 in Dubai, we built an AI installation where people could have a conversation with a tree. This was an actual, real-time spoken exchange with an AI system that had been given the voice and perspective of the Ghaf tree, the UAE's national tree and a symbol of resilience in arid ecosystems.

The pledges people made during those conversations were captured and transformed, in real time, into unique generative artworks. The project was called the Tree of Life, and it remains one of the most meaningful things I've worked on. The Tree of Life case study covers the brief and how the installation was built.

The Brief: Technology in Service of Urgency

Our collaboration with COP28 started with a challenge that sounds simple and isn't: how do you make climate pledges feel real and personal, rather than performative?

The instinct in tech-forward events is to reach for spectacle: the biggest screen, the most complex interaction, the most impressive demo. But spectacle without emotional resonance is just noise. We went in a different direction.

"Imagine if a tree could communicate with us. What change could it make?"

That question became the entire brief. Everything else followed from it.

How the Technology Served the Story

The Tree of Life installation used conversational AI to have genuine dialogues with visitors. The AI was trained on climate science, the biology of the Ghaf tree, and a defined emotional character. Beyond providing information, it expressed concern, asked questions, and challenged assumptions.

When a visitor made a pledge (a specific, personal commitment to a climate action), the system captured the language of that pledge and fed it into a generative art engine. The result was a unique visual piece that the visitor could keep as a record of their commitment.

What I Learned About AI and Empathy

The most common critique of AI is that it lacks empathy, that it can simulate care but not feel it. And that's true. But what I saw at COP28 was that the empathy came from the interaction itself.

People who spoke with the Tree of Life left differently than they arrived. The AI didn't convince them of anything new. Articulating a commitment to an entity that was listening, responding, and reflecting it back made the commitment more real.

That's a model I think about constantly now. Whether AI can be empathetic matters less to me than whether AI can create the conditions for human empathy to emerge.

Three Principles for Purpose-Driven AI Activations

1. The technology should be invisible

Visitors at COP28 weren't thinking about language models or generative art engines. They were thinking about the tree. Good purpose-driven AI disappears into the experience.

2. Participation beats observation

The most powerful moment in any activation is when a visitor stops being an audience member and becomes a participant. Design for that transition.

3. Leave something behind

The generative artwork mattered because it was a record of commitment. When people leave with something they made, they carry the experience forward. Digital or physical, the artefact matters.

Purpose-driven technology is a way of asking a different set of questions from the start. What do we want people to feel? What do we want them to do? What do we want them to remember? Answer those first. Then find the technology that serves those answers.