#68 A dive into every GenAI rabbit hole with Wilco Burggraaf and Mark Butcher
Over the last 3 months, several studies were published about GenAI and its environmental footprint. The most famous are Mistral AI’s life cycle analysis and Google’s study on Gemini. The opportunity and the conclusions of the Gemini prompt study were heavily debated in the Green IT field, including by two of the most respected thought leaders: Mark Butcher and Wilco Burggraaf. This Green IO episode is thus a first: the first ever debate. A polite, constructive and yet incredibly insightful debate where Mark, Wilco and their host Gaël Duez.
❤️ Like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. All the references, the link to get free tickets, the wrap-up article and the full transcript is on Green IO website here: https://greenio.tech
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#67 Can we be optimistic about AI sustainability? With Iuna Tsyrulneva
The potential impact of Artificial Intelligence on our worsening climate crisis is certainly a hot topic, pardon the pun.
Fortunately, we have an expert on today’s show to help us make sense of it all. Iuna Tsyrulneva is one of the leading voices in AI and sustainability. Well versed on both topics, Iuna holds a PhD in materials science, and works at Earth Observatory of Singapore with an interdisciplinary approach. She’s full of interesting insights, and brings a dynamic approach to thinking about the larger issue.
For example, did you know that saying “thank you” after every prompt actually contributes to AI energy usage? And they say kindness costs nothing…
As you’ll hear from Iuna, optimisation is the key to affecting sustainability in Artificial Intelligence. And that goes beyond ‘clean code’. Throughout our conversation, Iuna unpacks the end-to-end scope of optimisation, or what she calls her ‘four pillars’ of sustainable AI, that being algorithmic, hardware, data center and usage optimisation.
In this episode, Gaël and Iuna also discuss:
Sustainable AI vs AI for Sustainability
How (if at all) can we mitigate Jevons paradox?
Tackling the financial incentive vs sustainability in AI
Why she’s optimistic about the future of sustainable AI
Using more energy efficient languages to build next-gen AI
Leveraging open-source frameworks to lower resource costs
Practical tips on how to make AI models more energy efficient
And much more!
❤️ Like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode.
All the references, the link to get free tickets, the wrap-up article and the full transcript is on Green IO website here: https://greenio.tech
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#66 Data Centers and Water in the US: a Complex Story with Mohammad Islam and Shaolei Ren
“We're living under a water stressed world. Maybe not today, but a certain time of the year.” This new reality stated by Dr Shaolei Ren questions both the resiliency and the water footprint of the data center industry.
In this episode we bring an academic perspective on these questions with two of the most renowned experts in the field, Dr Shaolei Ren and D’ Mohammad Islam. They conducted an intensive survey in the US and shared many insights about the water consumption of data centers with their host Gaël Duez such as: The difference between water consumption and water withdrawal, The water displacement problem, Water is never a single number and has different colors, The trade-off of heat reuse, Why average water consumption of data centers at national level isn’t useful, How to blend cooling technics, A future of zero operational water data centers, The pro and con of nuclear energy to power data centers, and much more!
❤️ Subscribe, follow, like, ... stay connected the way you want to never miss an episode, twice a month, on Tuesday!
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#65 Green IO London 2025 special episode in collaboration with Architect Tomorrow
Today, we don’t have 1 or 2 guests but 10! In partnership with the YouTube channel Architect Tomorrow, we are glad to share with you snippets and interviews of the speakers who made the latest Green IO Conference in London a huge success last week.
The audio quality has improved since last year but is still perfectible. Except for this, I hope you’ll enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed crafting Green IO London 2025 for its attendees.
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#64 Why we hate recycling with Elaine Brown and Ross Cockburn
Elaine and Ross hate recycling. Both know first hand about our computers’ and smartphones’ life. About the wasted opportunities to better use the precious resources into it. Elaine Brown is the CEO of the Edinburgh Remakery who refurbished 295 laptops last year. She’s also a keen expert on the right to repair issues. Ross Cockburn is the Trustee of Reusing IT who has been dealing with repaired devices from Africa to Ukraine over the last 25 years.
Gael Duez sat down with them to cover multiple topics such as: The business of ITAD; The financial and social rewardings of giving to charities; The SSD revolution for longevity; Linux, the (not so) secret weapon for reusing IT; The reality of Digital poverty; Right to repair laws without teeth; The multiple cost of Windows 10 EOL; And … a new acronym invented during the recording: IUTA!
Green IO with Gaël Duez explores how to reduce the environmental impact of our digital world. Twice a month, on a Tuesdays guests from across the globe share insights, tools, and alternative approaches, enabling all responsible technologists, within the Tech sector and beyond, to build a greener digital world, one byte at a time.
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