Backstage: Green AI Committee

In this special backstage episode of Environment Variables, producer Chris Skipper spotlights the Green AI Committee, an initiative of the Green Software Foundation launched in 2024. Guests Thomas Lewis and Sanjay Podder share the committee’s mission to reduce AI's environmental impact through strategic focus on measurement, policy influence, and lifecycle optimization. The episode explores the committee’s approach to defining and implementing “green AI,” its contributions to public policy and ISO standards, and collaborative efforts to build tools, best practices, and educational resources that promote sustainable AI development.

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

​Chris Skipper: Welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news from the world of sustainable software development. I'm the producer of this podcast, Chris Skipper, and today we are thrilled to bring you another episode of Backstage, where we dive into the stories, challenges, and triumphs of the people shaping the future of green software.

 In this episode, we're turning the spotlight on the Green AI Committee, a pivotal initiative approved by the Green Software Foundation in March, 2024. With the rapid rise of AI, this committee has been at the forefront of shaping how companies innovate sustainably while reducing AI's environmental impact . From driving policies and standards, to fostering collaborations and crafting new tools, the Green AI Committee is charting a path toward a more sustainable AI future. Joining us today are Thomas Lewis, the founder of the committee, along with co-chair Sanjay Podder.

Together, they'll share insights on the committee's goals, their strategies for tackling AI's carbon footprint, and the critical role this initiative plays in ensuring AI development supports global net zero ambitions. And as always, everything we discuss today will be linked in the show notes below. So without further ado, let's dive into our conversation about the Green AI Committee.

First, I'll let Thomas Lewis introduce himself.

Thomas Lewis: Hi, I'm Thomas Lewis. I'm a green software developer advocate at Microsoft, and excited to be here. I also work in artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and I've recently been involved in becoming a book nerd again.

Chris Skipper: My first question to Thomas was, what inspired the creation of the Green AI Committee and how does it aim to shape the GFS approach to ensuring AI innovation aligns with sustainability goals? 

Thomas Lewis: Yeah, so we noticed that we were getting a lot of inquiries. We were getting them from legislators and a lot of technologists. Everybody from, you know, people working at your, you know, typical enterprise to folks who were doing research at universities and learning institutions.

And they were reaching out to try to get a better understanding of how the green software principles that we talk about and those practices applied to this growing impact of AI. It was not unusual to see on social media a lot of interest in this kind of intersection of green software or sustainability with artificial intelligence.

And, you know, this kind of shaped the GSF's approach because in a way we take a slow, methodical approach to thinking about the challenges of green AI and we tend to bring in a lot of experts who have thought about this space from quite a few different viewpoints. And we don't just look at it in a binary way of good or bad.

And I think a lot of times, especially online, it can be like, well, you know, AI is, you know, burning the planet down. And you know, and that the resources needed to run these AIs are significant, which is not untrue. And that's the thing I appreciate with the GSF is that you know, we look at those elephants in the room.

But with acknowledging those challenges, we also look at AI to help support sustainability efforts by, again, looking at it from those different vectors and then thinking of a viewpoint and also backing it up with the appropriate tools, technologies, and education that may be needed.

Chris Skipper: The committee's manifesto emphasizes focusing on reducing the environmental impact of AI. Could you elaborate on why this focus was chosen rather than areas like AI for sustainability or responsible AI?

Thomas Lewis: That's a good question. We tend to look at things from a variety of vectors and don't necessarily limit ourselves if we think it is important to dig into these other areas. But one of the things I do like, about the GSF is that typically when we start a committee or start a project, we always start with a workshop.

And what we do is we ask for a lot of experts to come to the, you know, virtual table, so to speak, and walk actually through it. So, everyone gets a voice and gets to put out an opinion and to brainstorm and think about these things. And these workshops are over multiple days. And so, typically the first day is kind of like just getting everything on the board.

And then the, you know, second time that we get together is really about how to kind of say, "okay, how do we prioritize these? What do we think are the most important? What should we start on first? And then what are the things that, you know, we put on the backlog?" 

And then the third, you know, one is typically where we're really getting sort of precise about "here's where our focus is going to be." 

So the conversation is always very broad in the beginning, right? Because you have all of these people coming to the table to say what's important. But as we kind of go through that, so, after a lot of that discussion, we decide on a prioritized focus. But of course we'll come back to others as we iterate because there are gonna be opportunities where, hey, maybe it is more important that we focus on a certain thing.

So, like, for example for the GSF, it is about building out the SCI for AI. So, if you're familiar with our Software Carbon Intensity spec, that now is a standard, that is one of, kind of the projects that came out of that workshop and that thinking, because, you know, first thing you kind of have to do if you wanna make a change in what you do is you have to measure it, right?

You have to measure what your carbon intensity is, whether it's AI or gaming or blockchain or what have you. And so I think by having this process of doing these workshops that's really what gets us to our priority. So I don't think that there's always sort of a kind of a crisp thing of like, why we did this or not do this, or why we prioritize it a way.

It's really that kind of collective coming together, which I think is what really makes the foundation very powerful because everyone has a voice in it.

Chris Skipper: The committee recently responded to a bill drafted by US Senators to investigate AI's environmental impact. How do you see the role of the Green AI Committee in shaping public policy and regulations?

Thomas Lewis: I've always seen the Green AI Committee's role in this as a trusted advisor, backed up with technical credibility and intellectual honesty. Our intent is not to rubber stamp legislation or just be another endorsement on a bill, but to review bills and papers that come to us with experts in this field and to call out things that we think are important to sustainability or also question things. What I really have appreciated is what comes to us is there has never been an intention for us just to say, "this is good" and give the check mark. But it really is, has been like, "hey, we want your feedback. We wanna understand how we can make these things better for our constituents."

And the other thing is that the committee also works very closely with our own policy group within the GSF because many of the members, including myself, don't work with legislators and politicians normally. And so there's a vernacular to the things that they talk about and how they approach things.

And so our policy group is also very helpful in this. So, you know, our committees aren't based on, "hey, everything related to AI will come through this committee." We have a lot of different groups, and those groups may be like the policy group, it may be the open source projects that are within the GSF and some of our education opportunities that are there.

But yeah, I would say from my perspective the role is mostly as a trusted advisor. And I think that if that is how people reflected the relationship regarding policy and advocacy, I would think that we are doing a good thing.

Chris Skipper: From the initial stages of founding the Green AI Committee to where it stands now, what have been the most valuable lessons learned that could guide other organizations aiming to promote sustainability in AI?

Thomas Lewis: I would say, first take a thoughtful approach in how you wanna approach things. Not only is green software a significant amount of tech, people and communities, but AI builds on top of that and has its own things, and the innovation is happening way faster than most people can keep up.

And so you've gotta take the time to figure out what you wanna focus on first. You can't say you're just gonna try to cover every angle and every thing. Second, I would say take a less dogmatic approach to your efforts. It's easy to say "things should be this way," right? Or, "hey, we're gonna do something 100%, or it's considered a failure."

This space is rapidly changing. This environment especially. So what you have to do is kind of take the time to get a wide variety of insights and motivations, and then methodically figure out what a hopefully optimal approach is going to look like. And then the third which, you know, may not be just related to, you know, green software and AI, but surround yourself with people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than yourself.

One of the things that I absolutely love being on this committee is there are just super smart people that I get to work with, like the people that are on this podcast. And I learned so much because we all have different contexts, we have different viewpoints and we have various experiences, right?

So we've got you know, folks who are in big companies and people who are in small companies and people who are just starting their sustainability journey. There's people who have been doing this for a long time. We have students, we have researchers. There's all kinds of people. So the more that you can kind of understand where a lot of people are coming from,

and again, what their context is, you're gonna find that you're gonna really be able to do a whole lot more than you have been able to before. And you may get ideas from places that you think you didn't before. And again, this isn't just with the Green AI Committee, I think this is in life, you know, and again, if you surround yourself with people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than yourself I always think that you're going to be in a better place and you'll end up being a better person for it.

Chris Skipper: Thanks to Thomas for sharing those insights with us. Next up we have Sanjay Podder. Sanjay is not only co-chair of the Green AI Committee, but also host of our other podcast here at the Green Software Foundation, CXO Bytes. My first question to Sanjay was how does the Green AI Committee contribute to reducing AI's carbon footprint?

And can you share specific strategies or tools the committee is exploring to achieve these goals?

Sanjay Podder: The Green AI Committee brings together experts from across the industry to shape what it truly means to build AI sustainably. Our goal is to not only define green AI, but to make it practical and actionable for developers, data scientists, and technology leaders alike. We started by creating a simple developer-friendly definition of green AI.

One that anyone in the ecosystem can understand and apply. But we did not stop there. We have taken a lifecycle approach breaking down the environmental impact of AI at every stage from data processing and model training to deployment and inference. This helps pinpoint where emissions are highest and where optimization efforts can have the biggest impact.

We are also actively working on strategies and tools to support these goals. By embedding best practices across the AI lifecycle, we are driving a shift towards AI systems that are not just powerful, but also responsible and sustainable.

Chris Skipper: The manifesto highlights the importance of partnerships with nonprofits, governments, and regulators.

Could you share some examples of how collaborations have advanced the Green AI committee's mission?

Sanjay Podder: The committee understands that tackling AI's environmental impact demands broad collaboration with various stakeholders to create comprehensive standards. These standards will focus on transparency software and hardware efficiency and environmental accountability. Engaging a wide range of AI and ICT organizations will help build consensus and ensure that sustainability is a core design principle from the start.

Chris Skipper: The committee is tasked with supporting projects like the development of an ISO standard for measuring AI's environmental impact. What milestones have been achieved in this area so far, and what are the next steps?

Sanjay Podder: Despite rapid advancement in AI, practitioners and users currently lack clear guidance and knowledge on how to measure, reduce, and report, AI impacts. This absence limits public awareness and hinders efforts to address AI's environmental footprint, making it more challenging to develop AI sustainably.

To address these challenges, the committee is actively pursuing initiatives to provide practitioners and users with the necessary knowledge and tools to minimize AI's environmental footprint. The goal is to increase awareness of green AI principles and promote sustainable AI development practices. For example, Green AI Practitioners course to increase the awareness of green AI and understanding of the implications of AI development on the environment.

It'll explain the fundamental principles of green AI developments and solutions and, provide practical, actionable recommendations for practitioners, including guidelines for measurement. Software Carbon Intensity for AI to address the challenges of measuring AI carbon emission to the AI lifecycle, and support more informed decision making and promote accountability in AI development.

Chris Skipper: And finally, what are some of the long-term goals for the Green AI Committee, and how do you see these objectives evolving with advancements in AI technology? 

Sanjay Podder: Our goals are evolving to reduce the ecological footprint of AI systems. Green AI isn't just a standalone solution. It's a core component of a broader sustainability ecosystem. As we advance in this mission, we urge more organizations to join the conversation and help build a more sustainable future for AI, developing and regularly updating standardized methodologies to measure AI's environmental impact will be essential for driving sustainable and scalable AI development.

Chris Skipper: Thanks to Sanjay for those insights. Next up, we have some events coming up in the next few weeks that we'd like to announce. First up, a virtual event from our friends at Electricity Maps, Carbon-aware IT: The new standard for sustainable tech infrastructure, on May the fifth at 6:00 PM CEST.

Explore how organizations optimize IT infrastructure to meet their net zero goals. Then for those of you in Germany, there is a hybrid event in Karlsruhe run by Green Software Development Karlsruhe, called Inside CO2.js - Measuring the Emissions of the Web, happening on May the sixth at 6:30 PM CEST.

This is also a hybrid event, so there will be an online element. Learn how to make emissions estimates and use CO2.js, a JavaScript library from regular environment variables host, Chris Adams and the Green Web Foundation. Then we have another event that is purely virtual happening on May 6th at 6:30 PM CEST, called Monitoring for Software Environmental Sustainability.

Learn how to incorporate software sustainability metrics into your monitoring system. And finally in New York, the Green IO and Apidays conference, green io, New York, happening from May the 14th until May the 15th. Get the latest insights from thought leaders in tech sustainability and actionable hands-on feedback from practitioners scaling green IT. So we've reached the end of this special backstage episode on the Green AI Committee Project at the GSF. Thanks to both Thomas and Sanjay for their contributions. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. To listen to more podcasts about green software, please visit podcast.greensoftware.foundation, and we'll see you on the next episode.

Bye for now.