Climate Week panel at Viam HQ: Leveraging AI and robotics for good

This Climate Week we hosted a panel at Viam's HQ in NYC, exploring how robotics and AI can address urgent climate and societal challenges. Our Founder and CEO Eliot Horowitz joined Bar Pereg (Founder and CEO of PollyLabs) and Ben Soltoff (Entrepreneur in Residence at MIT's Martin Trust Center) for a wide-ranging discussion on robotics for public good.

The conversation centered around a fundamental question: what if the same platforms advancing robotics in industry could also accelerate progress on broader societal challenges? The panel explored 3 key areas of opportunity: people, the planet, and climate resilience. Here are the main insights that emerged.

People: Rethinking automation's role in the workforce

Physical solutions in climate tech and robotics create different categories of jobs than software-only ventures. Unlike purely digital businesses, these sectors create substantial opportunities in manufacturing, installation, and ongoing maintenance that require skilled human workers.

The conversation also explored how relocating manufacturing closer to consumers could transform both employment and environmental outcomes. As Eliot remarked “I want everything we consume to be built within about 200 miles of where you live. Right now cotton is made in the US and shipped to six different countries just to come back as a shirt. That's slightly inefficient, to say the least.”

 This shift could bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the US while significantly reducing transportation emissions and the environmental toll of long-distance logistics.

The panelists agreed that successful automation transitions require thoughtful planning around funding and ensuring benefits reach communities that need them most. Many climate tech projects already demonstrate this potential, creating good jobs in rural areas that welcome economic development.

The planet: Enabling solutions at scale

Robotics applications for environmental challenges span across both direct intervention and addressing root causes. Some tasks, like removing plastic from oceans, simply cannot be done safely and at scale by humans. Robots are uniquely suited to handle dangerous conditions and repetitive work that would be impossible for human teams to tackle effectively.

Beyond direct cleanup, Eliot highlighted how Viam's platform enables ecosystem restoration projects that rebuild natural climate defenses. Viam supports the Billion Oyster Project in New York Harbor, where Viam’s platform is used to monitor oyster planting areas and accelerate reef restoration. These restored reefs serve as natural infrastructure that prevents flooding while rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Similar applications include automated reforestation, where purpose-built robots could plant trees at massive scale with minimal unintended consequences. As Bar emphasized we're now in a really interesting moment where robotics is going to accelerate, either to serve the most commercially lucrative opportunities, only the massive farms and only the most wealthy nations or we will be able to help use robotics to also address issues around labor shortages and climate solutions.

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Climate resilience: Building systems that adapt to change

The conversation explored how robotics and automation can help communities prepare for and adapt to climate-driven challenges, from extreme weather events to longer-term environmental shifts, across everyday operations and emergency response.

The panelists discussed the importance of building more resilient infrastructure broadly. This includes:

• Better sensors to detect when something is happening
• Improved communication systems to coordinate responses, and 
• Smarter deployment tools that can adapt to changing conditions. 

When it comes to disaster response specifically, the challenges become more acute. Eliot emphasized that building resilient systems requires assuming traditional infrastructure may fail. GPS signals can become unreliable, internet connectivity disappears, and power grids go down exactly when they're needed most. This reality shapes how any emergency response systems need to be designed. 

The discussion touched on various applications where robots can safely navigate environments too dangerous for humans, from search and rescue to early warning systems that can operate independently of traditional infrastructure. 

Ben pointed to simple but effective interventions like providing shade and shelter, ensuring people can check on neighbors, and creating communication systems so isolated individuals can get help during extreme weather events, highlighting that often the most impactful solutions focus on enabling human connections and community support systems.

Making robotics accessible for public good

Throughout the discussion, a central theme emerged: intelligent machines can serve both people and the planet. It should be easier for anyone to build robots that solve real-world problems without requiring millions in funding or years of development time.

Whether it's automating supply chains, monitoring environmental conditions, or building climate-resilient infrastructure, the same platforms, systems, and incentives advancing robotics in industry can also accelerate deep tech progress for the broader public good.