AI and greener choices

The earth is heating up and AI isn't helping. It drives major increases in electricity use, water use and CO2 emissions. Yet, industry and governments alike seem keen to leverage the latest tech. Can we make greener choices? Yesterday, I spoke at a conference on AI in government about sustainable choices. The presentation and slides were in Dutch, this post is a high level summary of what I covered. As the presentation took place during a record-breaking heatwave, which meteorologists attribute to climate change, and there were some airconditioning-related issues, very little irony was lost on us. Words matter I started out talking about if AI is good or bad for sustainability and called it the wrong question. It's the wrong question, because both AI and sustainability are concepts that have many meanings. AI can be understood in different ways: as a technology, there are many kinds; Microsoft alone has 78 products named Copilot, but also, there are many types of AI, like computer…