AAIC Energy: Pathways to a Sustainable AI Portfolio

Keynote of Anand Rao and Joseph Voyles of PwC at Applied AI Conference: AI in the energy sector on March 23, 2022

The past decade has seen breakthroughs in A.I. that have expanded the scope of problems that are addressed within the enterprise, generated efficiencies as a capability that enables process transformation, and produced new value by tapping into existing data sets. However, these breakthroughs, often tied to computational complexity, have resulted in ever increasing energy consumption and the costs associated. While these footprints may be a fraction of those of current blockchain and broader enterprise compute workloads, the steady increase in adoption and model portfolio expansion present a growing energy concern. In this presentation, we will review the growing computational and energy consumption trends related to current A.I. solutions and advancements, we will introduce sustainability as a new facet for evaluating model performance, and we will outline steps, tools, and trends that are available to make sustainability a part of the model development process that can improve model portfolio sustainability and ROI.