Has the development of artificial intelligence promoted urban pollutant and carbon emission reduction? Evidence from China

Driven by the "dual carbon" goals, China's economy is gradually advancing toward green transformation, and leveraging new-generation information technologies to facilitate environmental governance has become a key national strategic priority. Based on the panel data of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2009 to 2023, this paper adopts a double machine learning model to systematically investigate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on urban pollutant and carbon emission reduction, as well as its underlying mechanisms and regional heterogeneity. The results show that AI significantly promotes urban pollutant and carbon emission reduction, with the core regression coefficient being -0.026. Mechanism…

• NO
  National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences