Artificial intelligence (AI) and complex machine learning algorithms have come to play a profound role in many of our day-to-day activities. We have finally landed squarely in the age of ubiquitous computing—a stage of computer-society integration first predicted in 1988 by Mark Weiser at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, in which computer systems would “vanish into the background,” weaving “themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” This fusion of digital technologies and blurring of the human and digital boundaries is a new form of industrialism. Similar to all other industrial revolutions, these advancements and rapid shifts in productivity are outpacing our understanding of the potential costs and benefits. As AI becomes more prevalent in all areas of life, we need to turn our attention to the interactions between AI and our physical environment, to harness the potential of this technology while avoiding environmental and societal harms. Technological revolutions may fail to materialize, but when they do, they may have unforeseen consequences that leave us little time to prepare.

The COVID-19 pandemic will have far-reaching and even transformative implications for environmental law. Although the future trajectory of the pandemic remains uncertain, it has already brought many changes to how people live, and is likely to bring many more. This Comment explores four important types of change triggered by the pandemic: (1) behavioral changes (including behaviors with environmental impacts); (2) changes in values (including regarding the environment); (3) demographic changes that affect levels of background risk against which laws (including environmental laws) operate; and (4) changing resources (including those that can be spent on environmental or other amenities). Each of these changes has potentially important implications for the assumptions built into environmental law, for the ability of environmental law to effectively regulate the environment, and for the way that humans will interact with the environment in coming years and decades.