Catherine Nakalembe, who has spent over 15 years building predictive climate models from satellite data, argues that AI-driven disaster forecasting is outpacing the world’s ability to act on its warnings. She notes that communities from uninsured American mobile-home parks to rural Madagascar and Nigeria may receive identical alerts but lack safe shelter or financial means to respond. She points out that international disaster-response funding covers less than 0.1% of actual need while billions flow into AI data centers instead, and argues that for every dollar spent on AI forecasting, roughly ten dollars must go toward local capacity and physical infrastructure to convert predictions into saved lives.
