CXO Bytes

Host Sanjay Podder speaks with Kerry O’Donnell, a technology and sustainability leader, about how organizations can embed environmental responsibility into digital transformation and AI adoption. Kerry explains why sustainability must be treated as a value driver, how architecture and procurement can enforce greener decisions, and the importance of measuring IT and AI footprints to manage them effectively. They cover practical tactics such as right-sizing AI models, running workloads where clean energy is available, and demanding transparent carbon data from vendors to ensure innovation supports climate goals rather than undermines them.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInKerry O’Donnell: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:The incompatibility of AI and decarbonization [09:12]The Cloud and the Climate: Navigating AI-Powered Futures [10:30]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification [14:31] If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Sanjay Podder speaks with Cooper Elsworth, Google’s lead for AI and cloud emissions insights, about the real energy, carbon, and water footprint of AI systems. They discuss Google’s groundbreaking research on measuring AI’s environmental impact using empirical data rather than estimates, revealing a comprehensive methodology, with Cooper explaining how Google’s full stack approach, spanning hardware, software, data centers, and clean energy procurement, has cut Gemini’s carbon footprint by 44x in a year. The conversation also explores the balance between energy efficiency and water usage, the role of transparent metrics in driving climate action, and how AI can be scaled sustainably without undermining net-zero goals.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInCooper Elsworth: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Measuring the environmental impact of delivering AI at Google Scale [00:53] TPUs improved carbon-efficiency of AI workloads by 3x | Google Cloud Blog [01:45] Measuring the environmental impact of AI inference | Google Cloud Blog [01:52] Green AI Position Paper | GSF [24:48] Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [28:13]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Sanjay Podder speaks with Dr. Katia Chaban about uniting IT and sustainability through circular economy practices. Dr. Chaban shares her journey into sustainable IT, the importance of addressing e-waste and embodied carbon, and the growing challenges posed by AI. She highlights how circular thinking, training, and cross-industry collaboration can help CXOs and technology leaders embed sustainability into IT strategies while reducing costs and environmental impact.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInDr. Katia Chaban: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Software Carbon Intensity specification [11:02]The Carbon Literacy Project [20:16]Environment Variables - Real Time Cloud with Adrian Cockcroft [30:34]Updating the Materiality of Sustainability Management | NTT DATA Group [34:25]Global Data Centers 2025 Sustainability Report | NTT DATA [40:26]Green Software Practitioner | GSF [45:56]Awesome Green Software | GSF [43:54]The Green Software Foundation Expands Efforts to Incentivize Decarbonization in the Software Industry NTT DATA Announces First Sustainability Report for its Global Data Centers Division Global Data Centers 2025 Sustainability Report | NTT DATA NTT DATA named a Leader by Everest Group in Sustainable IT Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2025 report If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Welcome to another episode of CXO Bytes, where we bring you unique insights into the world of sustainable IT from the view of the C-Suite. I am your host, Sanjay Podder. Today's guest, Dr. Katia Chaban. Brings over 30 years of global IT leadership, including with NTT Data, EDS, and many others to our current mission, harnessing technology, business and people so that enterprises, ecosystems, and the planet can thrive.Katia, welcome. Excited to dive in.Dr. Katia Chaban: Thank you. I am as excited as well. Appreciate the opportunity.Sanjay Podder: Katia, can you, introduce yourself? You know what? You have been doing and what got you interested in the field of, you know, uniting sustainability and technology? You know, that will be very interesting to know.Dr. Katia Chaban: It's actually a funny story because back in 2021, I had been with NTT Data actually, and back in 2020, 2020 I started my doctorate. During the period of COVID I decided. That I needed to do something right other than be upset about what was happening in the world. And so I started my education, so my doctorate in business. And then in 2021, I decided to actually leave corporate world, leave the IT industry and go and focus on school.And I did that. And as I was trying to research my dissertation, like what is my topic going to be? I mean, it's a big part of that education through your doctorate. I had, I had two choices. I came up with this really interesting concept around acceleration of the digital transformation, right? How do we apply that emergency change behavior from COVID to digital transformations?But then I also had this idea where I kept seeing this sustainability topic, this ESG topic in all of our strategy courses and all my readings and discussions, and then I came across this thing called the Circular Economy, and I'm like, "what is this thing?"And so I started doing research about it. And so I then decided that I wasn't gonna do something that I had already been doing for a very long time.I wanted to restart my brain and focus on something new. And so I did, and I focused on circular economy actually in the consumer goods industry. So not even in IT, but it was with that dissertation, its business impacts, and it turned out to be, you know, planet impacts with the amount of waste that comes from the returns process.So I graduated, I accelerated that schooling and I graduated and I thought, "yay, I am out of IT! I'm gonna go and work in sustainability and save the world. This is awesome." And then I started talking to people and really building that network, from around the world and got to speak at a conference in Thailand where I got to,and then, but I started talking to all my IT friends and some folks are like, "Hey, you know, there might be an opportunity for you in sustainability in IT."I'm like, "what you talking about?" So as an academic now I've started to do the research and I went, oh my goodness, the water, the waste, the emissions, the carbon, what is the rare earth mineral? What is happening? And this, to me, this invisible impact of IT is a massive sustainability, and with the advent of AI and the other, is going to be something that we have to control.And I said, well, I guess I can't get out of IT. I'm gonna go back to IT but I'm going back to IT with a new lens, a new purpose, and a new focus. And that's really to become that advocate, right, that evangelist, and to really drive the practices that we need to have in order not to be the negative impact to the planet, right?We really have to maximize all the positive things that IT can do and at the same time minimizing our harm. So I thought I was outta IT after all those years, but now I'm back, but really energized on the topic itself because it really will have a massive impact.Sanjay Podder: No, absolutely. I agree with you on that. In fact, some of the studies shows that, by 2040, 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions will come from IT. And this data came from a research which is, which predates the rise of generative AI. So we can just imagine how things can be. Before we dive in further, I just wanted to let the audience know that everything we discussed today, will be linked in the show notes below this episode.So, Katia, you know, you are now focused on sustainability and technology and your background research in the area of circularity, right. You know, that is very interesting. How do you see all of this together? Like what are the big opportunities you see when it comes to, say, circularity in the IT context?Right. You know, are people missing it? Because most of the time we talk about, for example, carbon emissions. We talk about usage, operational emissions, right? So, but when we talk about circularity, would be very interested, given you have been an expert in this topic, how do you see those opportunities in the IT context?Dr. Katia Chaban: Yeah, so there's massive opportunities. One, circularity is a way of thinking, right? It's almost a, it's a philosophy and it can be applied to everything. So even when we're talking about software development and the SCI and how we're calculating emissions and what those environmental impacts are, what we're also trying toteach people is that whole lifecycle develop development of keeping things in use for longer, and how do you develop things that are more modular and can be replaced and repaired versus having to create something in a whole and then get rid of it, right? So that's a philosophy, but where it really comes into play is hardware.So we look at corporations with massive amounts of end user assets. We look at IT assets, your servers, your network devices. I mean, and the larger the organization, the more these assets are out there. And so from a circularity perspective, it's, for me, the big focus for those assets is something called e-waste diversion, right? And so how do we buy these things? How do we treat these things? How do we, end of life, dispose of these things in a way that we are not contributing to a massive, already massive e-waste problem? A problem that's gonna continue to get worse with AI, right? Because as we're building more data centers, we need more equipment, we need more things to run our AI on, and those things are gonna be end of life very quickly because just of the usage on them, the energy that it's, and where are we gonna put it?What's gonna happen with those things? And so where circularity is a, is massive. And by the way, circularity then also causes, right, e-waste causes emissions. So it all comes around to emissions and it all comes around to climate change. But we have to look at, you know, very different things.The other thing in circularity that people don't consider is how do you make these things. And so it's rare earth minerals. It's, we take things from the ground, right? And we use those things to make things, chips and LEDs and all of these things within our electronic devices. And the one thing I tell people, which is interesting to see their reaction is when you take that stuff out of the earth, it doesn't grow back.And people are like, "what do you mean it doesn't grow back?"You know, there's just this preconceived notion that, you know, whatever we take, it's like a, it's like a weed. You pull it out and it comes back and it doesn't. And so the more and more that we are mining, the more and more that we're taking those virgin minerals out, the less and less there is.And so as we see demand increase for IT assets, because we have this increase in AI infrastructures and our cloud and all these kind of stuff, there's a decrease in availability. So there's cost issues there as well, but there's just availability issues, which should then force the conversation about how do we recycle these components and reuse these components.And again, going back to that modular design, create our assets in a way that we can easily go in, take the things out that

In this episode of CXO Bytes, host Sanjay Podder speaks with Marc Zegveld, Managing Director of ICT at TNO, about the competitive value of green IT. Drawing on the recent Green IT Value Case, real-world case studies, and research, they explore how sustainability initiatives can enhance business performance—from cost savings and supply chain clarity to talent attraction and regulatory preparedness. Marc emphasizes that green IT is not just a climate imperative but a strategic differentiator, requiring top-down leadership, grassroots innovation, and effective change management. Together, they discuss how businesses can embed sustainability across operations to thrive in a tech-driven, low-carbon future.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInMarc Zegveld: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:The Green IT Value Case | TNO [05:57]Awesome Green Software | GSF [23:26]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [23:39]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Marc Zegveld: Hi, Sanjay. Thanks for inviting me on this, on this podcast. I'm really happy to join. I think it's very important and relevant topic what we discussed. My background is, I'm now a two year Managing Director of the Unit Strategy, Policy, ICT at TNO. We are an independent research organization based out of the Netherlands.But we work internationally. We do that for both business to business as well as business to government, both in industry as well as in, for defense. My background before that, I've been working 15 years at IBM. And mainly as a European services leader for the industrial sector.And before that I've been teaching innovation, high tech at the TU Delft, at my own consulting firm. And I used, I was a columnist for the leading financial newspaper in the Netherlands. Now I'm an engineer by background, but also, I got my PhD in business strategy economics. I'm intrigued by competitiveness and what triggers competitiveness. That's, one. And just to elaborate on that a bit, and then we go to the second, is, so competitive is not something which comes easy. You need to stand out, you need to invest, you need to, build.It's based on, most of the time, hard work, technology, but also reputation. It's a lot of elements which you need to bring to the table to gain and sustain sustainability. And I'm pretty convinced that from the green IT movement, this is competitive, by heart. And creating competitiveness by heart. As it's, you're able to combine a reduction of cost if you organize it well. It can bring you more clarity in your complex supply chain.It gives you a better insight in decision making from an investments perspective, but also from a Marceting reputational side it can enhance your position. But only if you're able to combine all these different threats into one specific aspect of competitiveness. And I think that's where I'm intrigued, and that's why, we did this study together with Accenture, and picked out some relevant cases and draw some conclusions.But that's one. There's another step I'm intrigued by, is the following, we hear, we read and hear a lot about, let's say the doomsday clock or whatever. About that we have a small earth that we have a lot of carbon emissions, et cetera. And if you're an optimist, if you're a pessimist, I perfectly, I don't care.But there's something we can do just better, improve, compared on what we do without losing quality of life, quality of on what we do for planet as a whole. Now finding that whole combining with competitiveness, I think that's the strengths which should unique companies, which should unique all other organizations around the globe to see what we can do together. Sanjay Podder: Wonderful. And, you know, one thing that really strikes me here is you started with competitive space, right? Because this is a space where people primarily drive the conversation with concerns around climate change, the greenhouse gas emissions. What you did talk about in the second part,you know, we are, the planetary boundaries. We are a small planet. But typically in my own experience, I have seen that, given the challenging business environment that we are seeing today, the leading this conversation with greenhouse gas emissions is not as appealing to business as competitiveness that you mentioned.Right. And cost efficiencies, operational efficiencies and competitiveness. Many businesses do not see that part today. They can still relate to cost efficiencies, which is equally attractive, improving their bottom line. But competitiveness, you know, is very rare for people thinking that green software, green IT, green cloud, green AI is a competitive differentiator. Right. And I'm glad you started the conversation with competitiveness, which I think it'll be great if you can throw a bit more spotlight, because that to me is the most critical point in this whole conversation for businesses to realize that this is not some altruistic thing they're doing for the planet, but this is for them to survive, to thrive and be ahead of the rest of the competition.So Marc would love to hear a little bit more, and I'm sure you put a lot of it in your Green IT value case. Right. So, you know how have you articulated that? Marc Zegveld: No, it's a fair point, Sanjay. And, absolutely, competitive first.And I'm not sure how you see it, but for me, it's all about change. And change starts with the action. So, internally within companies, you need to fire up you need to ensure that indeed there is action and then competitiveness or the underlaying parameters in boosting competitiveness is key to start that change.And once more companies, more organizations, understand and work that way, I'm convinced, without being altruistic, but I'm convinced that indeed, a greener IT, a greener situation, a healthier planet can be can be started. But if we start that discussion from a planet perspective, we can agree or disagree, but we more have a debate than that what we have in action.And I'm more an action-oriented person. And I think that's what companies, and that's why I like this conversation, as well, Sanjay is, with you, with your team. You're more action-oriented. And I think that's where the trigger and that's where it really starts. So competitiveness, for my end, is a multifaceted aspect. It's about not only attracting capital and of course within, we have more and more sustainable capital providers, it's also about attracting talent, the new kids from school, I would say, attracting them, gen Z and others, it's more difficult to attract them and to keep them.And once you, your part, when you tell your story about green IT, about the relevance of green IT that it's indeed not only strong for their environment, but definitely it's strong for boosting the company. It's strong for their career. It's a relevant aspect on being competitive as well. It is a competitiveness indeed for the full supply chain backward looking, but also forward looking. Most of the supply chains are very complex. If indeed we're able to detangle and create some more clarity also from a sustainability perspective, from a green perspective.In most of the cases we've seen, we're able to reduce cost. We were able to optimize. So there's several aspects, and I think instead of going to the root of only cost cutting, here, competitiveness is a multifaceted aspect, and especially if we're able to create that interplay between these different facets, then we really can build strong, stronger, more competitive organizations, more competitive companies. Sanjay Podder: Wonderful. And, you know, I think you touched upon various aspects like the talent getting attracted to companies which embrace sustainability. Right? And you spoke about the supply chain. I think another area where, though it might not be an imperative today, it might turn out to be of an important area for business is regulations coming up in this space. Today, the regulations are fairly voluntary. Even the EU AI Act when it comes to, you know, environmental impact, you know, it's much more stronger on the social aspects of responsible AI and stuff like that. I think that would be another area for business to be ready for the future when regulations are much more stringent around these areas, at least in certain part of the geographies, right? So that would be important. So, Marc, one of the thing that I wanted to discuss more is examples of businesses that are turning this into a competitive differentiator. I remember in some of my early conversations in the field of sustainable AI, when we would talk about techniques like quantization, pruning of models, creating smaller models fit for purpose. All that seemed great from a theory point standpoint, theoretical standpoint, right? And, but the moment DeepSeek did all of this and suddenly came out with, you know, large language models much more cost effective.You know, they built, they trained the model and a fraction of cost compared to other large language models, and we could see that they used the green principles and they have converted it into a competitive differentiator, creating something very unique. You know, and suddenly people started thinking, "do we really need so much compute?" Right. And, the outcome was good e

In this episode of CXO Bytes, host Sanjay Podder speaks with Adrian Cockcroft, former VP at Amazon and a key figure in cloud computing and green software, about strategies for reducing the environmental impact of AI and cloud infrastructure. Adrian shares insights from his time at AWS, including how internal coordination and visibility helped drive sustainability initiatives. He also discusses the Real-Time Cloud Carbon Standard, the environmental impact of GPUs, the challenges of data transparency, and the promise of digital twins like meGPT in scaling sustainable tech practices.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInAdrian Cockcroft: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Stern Review - Wikipedia [02:26] OS-Climate [05:55] Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative [06:31]Real Time Energy and Carbon Standard for Cloud Providers | Notion [12:47]Real TIme Cloud | GitHubSoftware Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification [27:21] Kepler | CNCF [27:49]Measuring Carbon is Not Enough | Adrian Cockcroft [37:15]Virtual Adrian Revisited as meGPT [40:15]Soopra.ai [43:44]OrionX.net Will AWS Have Anything New To Say About Sustainability at re:Invent 2024? (Nope…) | by adrian cockcroft If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Hi. Welcome to another episode of CXO Bytes, where we bring you unique insights into the world of sustainable software development from the view of the C-Suite, I am your host, Sanja Poddar. Today we are thrilled to have with this Adrian Cockcroft, a pioneer in cloud computing and a passionate advocate for sustainability and sustainable tech practices.Adrian has been at the forefront of transforming software practices, driving the adoption of greener and more efficient cloud solutions. As a prominent figure in the Green Software Foundation, his insights are invaluable for anyone looking to build scalable and eco-friendly tech infrastructures. Adrian, welcome to the show.Kindly introduce yourself.Adrian Cockcroft: Thank you very much. thanks, Sanjay. I'm Adrian Cockcroft. I'm a consultant and analyst currently at Orionx.net. Happy to be here. I retired from corporate life at Amazon where I was a VP in 2022. And nowadays, I'm an advisor to several companies, from fast flowing global public organizations like Nubank, to emerging startups like NetAI.ai, and various other small things that I dabble in, in the startups space.Sanjay Podder: Wonderful, and we'd like to hear more about all this. Before we dive in here, a reminder that everything we talk about will be linked in the show notes below this episode. Adrian, you have had an illustrious career in cloud computing and sustainability. Could you start by sharing what inspired you to focus on green software and how your journey led you to your involvement with the Green Software Foundation?Adrian Cockcroft: Yeah, we have to go quite a long way back. Somewhere in the early 2000s there was a report, I think it was called the Stern Report, and it was a report on the economic impact of climate change. And around that time we sort of, a big rise in climate denial and a big attack, what I saw it as an attack on science. Good science. I have a physics degree, so I feel my, you know, going back in very long time ago, but I see myself as a scientist and someone that's able to look at a bunch of science and decide, you know, "this makes sense, this doesn't make sense." And what I saw was that the denialist arguments were incoherent.They'd argue different points depending on who they were talking to. It just, it didn't add up. Whereas the, scientific arguments were consistent. And we're worrying, right? We were on a path to a lot of problems, which are happening now. We haven't been addressing them fast enough. So that was the initial thing.It was nothing to do with my work at the time. I was probably at eBay at that time. I joined Netflix soon afterwards. So I was working on migrating, well, working on some personalization things with Netflix and then working on the architecture for migrating Netflix to AWS. And then, we've sort of dived in a little bit, I adopt, had solar panels for 2009, the electric cars since 2011. So sort of put, tried to act as a bit of a, you know, "put your money where your mouth is" as a someone that people could, you know, happy to be the early adopter and figure things out. And then after I joined Amazon in 2016, I could see Amazon was, had actually quite a lot going on that was related to climate and efficient use of energy and things like that. But they weren't really telling that story. And I tried to get involved to see if I could, you know, get involved at any way. And I, it took me a little while to do that. What I found was, you know, I was basically the vice president in charge of the open source program and also out there, acting as sort of a evangelist, explaining to people how you should move to cloud.Doing lots of public speaking, I keyed some of the AWS summits and things, but there was no messaging around sustainability in the standard PR approved corporate messaging, which, you know, that's what you have to follow. So the challenge was how do we get PR to include the messaging in the standard,you know, so that everybody knows what they can say and has the information to back it up? And AWS is a very strict PR policy. It's very managed, and you have that, you have to get them on board and and build all of the right content and get everyone lined up to do that. So that was the challenge.And then, I found that somebody was trying to join a standards group called OS Climate, which is a Linux Foundation organization, as is GSF, and I'd previously been involved in, the work to get AWS to join the, CNCF, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. I was the initial board member for AWS,representing them at CNCF and the whole Kubernetes AWS and Kubernetes Arena. So I was, I understood how to join a standards body, basically. And so I helped Amazon join OS Climate. And that got me much more involved in the sustainability organization because they, it was open source climate information that was being shared for, mostly for financial analysts to do risk analysis.It's a very specific thing. So you can go look at OS-Climate.org if you want to see what they've been doing since. This would've been in about 2000, around that time. And then that was related to something called the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, which is a whole lot of climate related data that is shared for free on AWS, one of the programs that most people hadn't heard of.And eventually, I managed to make an internal move to the sustainability organization because they realized they needed to gather together everything that was going on. What was happening was customers were asking salespeople, what are we doing about sustainability? And they were calling, they were either making something up or they were calling random people in the sustainability organization.And that organization's job was to do the carbon footprint for all of Amazon. It wasn't to talk to AWS customers. Right? And so the VP that runs that organization, Kara Hurst, basically created a position for me as a, as another VP to move across to that group, and to gather together everything that going on across AWS and act as sort of a, all of this incoming requests and information and whatever, and makes sense of it.So this is actually kind of an interesting problem you have, right? If you're running a corporation, you find that there's a groundswell of enthusiasm around climate and it's driven by, you know, kids coming home from school and saying, "so what are you doing to make the world the place I can live in when I grow up?"Right? everything from that to board members, suppliers, legal mandates, there's many reasons why people have a need to be either greener, or to manage and report their carbon information. And it was popping up in all different directions. So that's, so what we did, there was a couple of tricks.One was that we started an internal email newsletter that went out every Monday. This is a very powerful trick. It's a pain in the neck to actually do every week. It's like, "damnit, I gotta write this stupid thing and get it out." I did it for a while and then I had a, luckily I had managed to hire someone to do it for me.But the, what it did was it said, well, here's a group and what they're doing. And then at the end of the email was a list of every group I could find and who, what roughly what they were doing and who to call. So like a "who are you gonna call? List," right. And. That email got passed around and people say, "well, I'm not on that list."So it gradually accumulated this long list of all the stuff, and if you ever read this message, you looked at the end, "wow, there's a lot of stuff going on." So it makes work visible, which is one of those principles of management, right? Make work visible. It made the work that was going on visible so people could see just how much stuff was going on.And each week we'd feature a different one of these groups that we'd run into a little bit more detail on what they were doing or any actual announcements that were going on publicly, like we just say some more wind farms or stuff like that were announced or as we got through like the reinvent conference

Host Sanjay Podder brings Noah Broestl, Associate Director of Responsible AI at the Boston Consulting Group, to the stage to explore the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI and its implications for business leaders. Together, they talk about the requirements of present and future AI governance frameworks, the road to sustainability in AI, and how the emerging risks of Generative AI are shaping the future of responsible technology. Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInNoah Broestl: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:GenAI Will Fail. Prepare for It. | BCG [10:12] Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [25:52] 2024 Green Software Foundation London Summit: | BCG [33:36] Responsible AI | Strategic RAI Implementation | BCG Scale GenAI Responsibly and Confidently with Human + Automated Testing and Evaluation | BCGGitHub - BCG-X-Official/artkit: Automated prompt-based testing and evaluation of Gen AI applications | BCG Analyzing Cultural Representations of Emotions in LLMs through Mixed Emotion Survey | Shiran DudyOECD Artificial Intelligence Review of Germany | AI Accountability in Germany If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Welcome to another episode of CXO Bytes, where we bring you unique insights into the world of sustainable software development, from the view of C-Suite. I am your host, Sanjay Podder, and today we have an exciting discussion lined up on the challenges and opportunities of responsible AI. Joining us today is Noah Broestl, partner and associate director of Responsible AI at Boston Consulting Group. With a career spanning Google, the Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society, the US Air Force, and now Boston Consulting Group, Noah has been at the forefront of AI safety, responsible AI, and technology-driven sustainability solutions. At BCG, he helps global business develop robust AI frameworks that balance innovation with responsibility. He is also a steering committee member of the Green Software Foundation, working on initiatives to ensure AI and software development are aligned with sustainability goals. Today we'll explore how AI governance frameworks, sustainability in AI, and emerging risks of generative AI are shaping the future of responsible technology. Noah, welcome to CXO Bytes. Before we get into details, can you please introduce yourself?Noah Broestl: Yeah. Thank you so much, Sanjay. Yeah. My name is Noah Broestl, partner and associate director of Responsible AI at Boston Consulting Group. Super excited to be here today. You know, I think you've covered it pretty well, Sanjay, in my background and the things that I'm working on now. But I've been thinking about, responsibility and technology for well over a decade and been working directly in that space for well over a decade.And so it's been a very exciting journey and as you're going through Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society, US Air Force, you know, a lot of really great memories working in all those spaces. But, you know, at BCG, really focused on helping people who want to be responsible in the deployment of technologynavigate what is effectively one of the most complex landscapes I've ever tried to operate in, which is we have technology laboratories that are producing on a weekly basis, what are, at least claimed to be, breakthrough technologies. We have, you know, research laboratories both academically and industrially that are producing amazing frameworks, amazing tools for responsibility. We have government entities, all over the US and all over the world that are producing guidance for how they should implement these technologies. But bringing all of those things together is really challenging and that's what motivated my move from Google into BCG, was to be closer to helping people. Now that we're seeing these technologies really have impact in organizations and in commercial applications, helping organizations figure out how you navigate any of that, it really does come down to, I think, two pillars, which are how do you govern this inside of organizations, and how do you build responsibility into the product development lifecycle? How do you enable your engineering teams, your product teams, your business teams, to really integrate responsibility as a component of the development lifecycle rather than as some stage gates that happens at the end of development prior to launch?So, very excited for our discussion today. I'm sure we're gonna go a lot of interesting places.Sanjay Podder: I'm really looking forward to learn a lot of things from you, you know, because I see that, you know, your interest in this topic has been for more than a decade, in fact, probably right from your education in Google and, you know, BCG. Just a quick question. You know, why? What got you interested in this?Noah Broestl: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those questions that is, so first off, if you're ever in at a cocktail party or anything like that and someone works in responsible AI and you want to get them excited, ask this exact question. Like, what was the moment in your career that was the turning point for you, where you went into responsible AI and certainly all of the pathways that lead here, I think, are fairly winding. Like, you know, I started as a computer science major. I ended up getting degrees in sociology and history and law and data science and ethics, eventually, but I think I can point to one place in my career where I started asking questions about the intersection between, technology and society.And one of the most gratifying roles that I've ever had was working in abuse response. So working on a major product with over a billion users and thinking about how do we protect these users from vandalism and fraud, how do we make sure that this product is trustworthy and useful to the people that we're providing it to? And you do that for a certain amount of time and you start to ask, I think, questions about why we're doing the things that we're doing, right? So if we take, for example, like for protecting a product leading up to an election, there are a couple of strategies you can take and one of them is just turn off the tap, right?Like, just stop any user content from being posted to the platform. Identify high risk places and say, alright, we're not going to accept any UGC on this. We're going to heavily curate these features in our data set, and we're going to allow them to just sit there and not have any of the other components that you may need for modern platforms that are going to increase freshness of data and make sure you have, you know, the most up-to-date information.So that is one strategy. You can shut everything down and protect it. Another question that you could ask there is, don't we have an obligation as a transnational platform, as a global platform, to amplify the voices of people expressing dissent with elected officials at the time when they have the most agency?I think that's another perspective you could take on this. Right. And if you shut off the tap, are you impacting the way that people are approaching their, yeah, I guess, you know, expressing dissent with elected officials, like, are those perspectives important to amplify or are they important to protect?And that question for me was the hinge that my career turned on, is how do we answer that question? And to answer that question, I had to make this shift from looking at my career as progressing through infrastructure engineering and technical program managements in infrastructure engineering,and I made a shift to, first academically, I moved from a degree in data science that I was working on and went into ethics. I said, "I need to go understand how we make decisions about what we ought to do." And that degree in ethics, I did my masters at the University of Oxford at the Uehiro Center.I was hoping that I would learn what I should do. I think I probably more accurately learned how to poke holes in what other people were doing. So I'm not sure it really gave me everything that I was looking for. No, but it was a fantastic way to understand, how do we approach decision making in these complex spaces?And then secondly, the way that we're using artificial intelligence, and certainly this pivot in my career was almost a decade ago, when I really got deeply into this, the artificial intelligence technologies that we were employing were pretty crude versions of what we see now. And so I had a lot of questions about, you know, what is the direction that artificial intelligence is moving in and how should we be prepared for the next evolution of these technologies.? And so I moved into research, into AI research, and tried to get as broad of a perspective as I could in how those technologies were evolving and where we could deploy them, deeply understanding how they would be able to integrate with sociotechnical systems in the future.And I remember at the time I said to my manager, "Hey, I'm going to shift my career to think about ethics and artificial intelligence." And he said, "oh, that's cute. You're never gonna make any money there, but if it makes you happy, go ahead and do that." And so it was definitely the point where my career shifted.Definitely the point where I saw a problem, wanted to investigate that

Host Sanjay Podder is joined by Eric Gertsman, Director of Tech Sustainability at Salesforce. They talk about shaping the future of green IT, with Eric sharing his journey from entrepreneur to sustainability leader, his work decarbonizing data centers, and the importance of accurate carbon accounting through Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud. They explore the AI Energy Score, a new tool developed in collaboration with Hugging Face to benchmark AI model efficiency, and discuss managing water as a critical resource in sustainable operations. Together they highlight how aligning sustainability with core business objectives can drive both environmental impact and business success.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInEric Gertsman: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:The Business Guide to Carbon Accounting | Salesforce [05:21]Salesforce Joins Technology and Academic Leaders to Unveil AI Energy Score Measuring AI Model Efficiency [10:12]AI Energy Score | Hugging FaceWater | WRI [14:09]Our founders created the 1% Pledge. | Salesforce [22:23]Aligning sustainability with good business practices | Salesforce [23:57]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Welcome to another episode of CXO Bytes, where we bring you unique insights into the world of sustainable software development from the view of the C-Suite. I am your host, Sanjay Poddar. Today's guest brings a rare blend of entrepreneurial spirit, tech savvy, and sustainability leadership. Eric Gertsman is the Director of Technology Sustainability at Salesforce where he's helping shape the future of green IT, from data center planning and infrastructure strategy to carbon accountability. Before Salesforce, Eric co-founded a company that built solar powered artisan travel trailers. Talking about walking the talk. He's also been a passionate advocate for ethical capitalism and the role of business as a platform for change. Eric, welcome to the show. Kindly introduce yourself.Eric Gertsman: Thanks, Sanjay. I appreciate you having me on. Excited to be here. Yes. I'm the Director of Tech Sustainability at Salesforce. As the title indicates, right, I focus on Salesforce's cloud infrastructure, which is a bedrock of the company and it's one of the first companies to embrace this infrastructure as a service model.So it's a very interesting view that the company's had over the years on infrastructure. I focus on decarbonizing our co-location and hyperscale data centers in this wildly changing industry, right? Most recently with the rise of AI. But every decade presents wild new challenges.I also pay attention to our water footprint, our waste footprint, in a number of other areas. So I'm excited to talk to you today.Sanjay Podder: Wonderful. Some great topics we will get insights from you on. So looking forward to this conversation, Eric. So, Eric, let's start with your journey. You have worn many hats, marketing, consulting, startup founder, and now sustainability leader at one of the world's biggest tech companies. What inspired your transition into Green Tech and how did you, you know, select this role and your current work at Salesforce?Eric Gertsman: Well, I think the one word answer would be 'meaning.' I'm not the type of person that checks in and checks out, very well for a paycheck. I really need to focus on things that are positively contributing to humanity. So, way back, almost two decades ago, I thought long and hard about what my career was gonna look like and realized that I wanted to focus on changing the world really from the inside out, incrementally moving organizations towards more sustainable, more efficient, more responsible activities. And you know, obviously over the last 20 years, while that may sound sexy, right, it happens in smaller, seemingly mundane chunks where, you know, it's one spreadsheet at a time or one case study or a meaningful meeting or a data source or something that, you know, you make incremental change and could have pretty wide effects.But yeah, I mean, it, you know, it, I could certainly talk about, for younger people how to do it, but really just to keep pushing and keep learning, whether you're in a company you wanna do intrapreneurship, to do more on the sustainability side and broaden your scope, to have a bigger impact.You know, whether you're in school and you wanna like look at the right classes and projects and case competitions or whatever, you know, keep pushing hard 'cause there's plenty out there to find. And all of that set me up for a path, over the last six years at Salesforce, to have really good impact.And I will say my time here actually has not just been sustainability. In fact, a lot of it has been around data center planning, infrastructure strategy, FinOps. Which has given me a much richer picture of what the company is and what it really means to do sustainability work. So, I'd welcome other people to, you know, bring cross-functional capabilities to the field.Sanjay Podder: No, I think you bring up a very good point on the cross-functional, you know, capabilities because to green the tech, you need to understand the underlying tech very well, right? Because in some sense, the greening of tech is building a tech which is much more efficient, bringing in some of the best practices.So I think all the past experience you had really enables you to now deliver on the promise of green tech, but that's fantastic. I'm sure a lot of our young people are interested to do a career here, so these are great points.So Eric, last year, I remember Salesforce released a Business Guide to Carbon Accounting, which breaks down how companies can measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emission. Why is carbon accounting so central to corporate sustainability today? And how are you implementing these principles inside Salesforce's own infrastructure operations?Eric Gertsman: Yep. Great. Great question and thanks for pointing out that resource. It's a good resource, your listeners can go to our website, download it, and I think you'll be providing links, I think, about some of the stuff we're talking about here, so it's a good one. Yeah, I mean, carbon accounting and the way I see it, right, we've all heard the old ad adage you can't manage what you can't measure.I think that's never truer than it is in sustainability. Proper tracking is the precursor to pretty much everything. All programs aimed at identifying opportunities, implementing action and determining results requires that, and it's vital, right, for any sustainability organization. It's often new stuff. It has been, there's new ways. It's a little bit of art, a little bit of science. We obviously at Salesforce confirm things with third party verification, but sometimes bring in our own sources and our own methodologies and make sure everything is strong and well devised.I also wanna take an opportunity, I think, 'cause a part of, for me, carbon accounting is not just the sort of the back looking after the fact accounting. I think a lot of it is the forward looking target setting, which I think is, a big part of, I think what this, world of, you know, data and data tracking and, sustainability really is.And so, you know, at Salesforce, one of our biggest north stars is science-based targets. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that term, they're long-term corporate goals, that are aligned to keeping the globe warming at no more than 1.5 degrees centigrade. Which, of course, is an enormous goal and quite frankly, maybe impossible today.But leading companies truly do have to think about our future and we need to be ambitious. We need to push for where we need to be. As you mentioned, our founder and CEO Marc Benioff has always said, I think you mentioned that it's a platform for change. Business is a platform for change.And it's been embedded in our culture in a variety of different ways. Because, you know, as the world shifts and as politics, winds shift around, you know, it's about corporate leadership, I think, that's gonna really pave the way. And so by setting these goals, I think is one real important way for us to stay laser focused on what we need to do as a society from the business perspective.And there are a lot of different ways how to do this right, to set different scopes and using different metrics. Yeah, and there's ways to engage, right? The Science-Based Target Institute is one organization that can help, but there's many pathways to doing this. We set an aggressive 2040 goal with interim 2030 goals, focused on scope one and two total decarbonization, and then scope three intensity reduction. And so it looks a little different for everyone, but I think that's super important, because as the company has multiple priorities, right, we don't want sustainability to be a nice to have, but a need to have, and that other priorities won't swamp it or dissolve it at the first chance because, you know, they're not as, you know, they don't have as hard and fast of the targets and objectives as other groups.Sanjay Podder: Yeah. And you know, when we started the Green Software Foundation, one of the mission was to see how we can reduce emission from the IT sector in line with the Paris Agreement. And things like carbon accounting is so critical there b

CXO Bytes host Sanjay Podder is joined by Dr. Paul Dongha, Head of Responsible AI and AI Strategy at NatWest Group, to discuss the evolving landscape of responsible AI in financial services. With over 30 years of experience in AI and ethical governance, Paul shares insights on balancing AI innovation with integrity, mitigating risks like bias and explainability in banking, and addressing the growing environmental impact of AI. They explore the rise of generative AI, the sustainability challenges of AI energy consumption, and the role of organizations in ensuring AI ethics frameworks include environmental considerations. Tune in for a deep dive into the future of AI governance, sustainability, and responsible innovation in the financial sector.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInDr. Paul Dongha: LinkedIn | Website Find out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:What the data centre and AI boom could mean for the energy sector – Analysis - IEA [17:37]A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation - GOV.UK [25:28]Harnessing the potential of AI in banking | NatWest Group [34:56]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Welcome to CXO Bytes, the podcast where we explore the intersection of technology, sustainability, and AI with leaders who are shaping the future. I am your host Sanjay Podder, and in this episode, we dive deep into the world of responsible and sustainable AI in financial services. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr Paul Dongha, head of responsible AI and AI strategy at NatWest Group. With over 30 years of experience in AI, financial services, and ethical governance, Paul has played a pivotal role in ensuring AI is deployed responsibly, balancing innovation with integrity. He has spearheaded AI ethics frameworks at major banks, advised on government AI policy, and even taught Generative AI at Harvard Business School.His expertise spans AI bias mitigation, responsible AI frameworks, regulatory alignment, and environmental impact of AI. In this episode, we will explore how AI is transforming banking, how ethics and risk management can drive innovation, and why sustainable AI is crucial to our digital future. Paul, welcome to CXO Bytes. Let's start by having you introduce yourself to our listeners.Paul Dongha: Great. Hello Sanjay. Thank you for that delightful introduction. Really great to be here. So I'm Dr Paul Donga. I'm head of Responsible AI and AI Strategy at NatWest Banking Group, based here in London. So as part of my role, what do I do? So it's really split into two parts. So as head of Responsible AI, I have a team of dedicated professionals who look at people, process, and technology.They look across the bank and ensure that the right people are involved to manage ethical risks of AI. So that's the people part. The process part is ensuring that the processes and workflows we have both within technical teams and risk management teams are appropriate for managing ethical risks. And as part of the technology part, my team work with model development, machine learning engineers, data scientists, to ensure that we have the right tooling in place in our platforms to mitigate ethical risks.And as part of the strategy, I have a team that lays out the bank's AI strategy for the next three to five years and ensure that across the bank, all teams are working towards implementing the strategy. Sanjay Podder: Great. So, Paul, you know, you have had an incredible career, I can see, from AI research and academia to leading responsible AI at one of the UK's largest banks. Can you share your journey and what inspired you to champion ethical AI in financial services? Paul Dongha: Well, Sanjay, as you say, I've had a long career, so it's a long story, but I'll try and be brief. I mean, look, I started programming in the 80s, right. A long, long time ago. And I was just, taken with programming. I love being technical. And I was lucky enough to study computer science at university.And as part of my one final year project, I just got into AI and I thought, "wow, this is really exciting." That led to me eventually doing a PhD in artificial intelligence in the early nineties. And I used to teach natural language processing. I used to teach AI. And I found it super fascinating, but as an academic in the 90s and being in probably the third AI winter, there was actually no jobs in AI.Which is kind of really weird to say, but right now, looking back, there was literally, it didn't really exist as an industry. So I had a choice. I could stay as being quite a poor academic choice. I could stay as being quite a poor academic in a field that was looked like it was going nowhere, or I could leave and get a job in a commercial enterprise. So I chose the latter, right? So in the late nineties, I came to the city of London and I spent 20 years working in various investment banks, always building systems, so building complex bank-wide, either risk management, pricing, derivative systems, and so on.But I always had this hankering to go back to my passion, which was artificial intelligence, and I think it was around 2015 I started seeing AI popping up, you know, Netflix, Amazon, collaborative filtering, and I got to thinking, "hold on, this is AI. This is kind of the stuff that we used to talk about."And over the next sort of two, three years, we saw more of it in mainstream news, right? Google were doing AI research, Amazon, Facebook, all the big tech companies. And I guess it was about 2009, '18, '19, my kind of midlife crisis. I thought to myself "well, look, do I want to go and do that work as a fairly old person, which is a passion, or do I just carry on working in banks, doing my thing?"And I made the decision that, look, I'm going to, I'm going to go, I'm going to leave my career and go back to AI. So I spent, about a year, I sat at my desk, I did loads of research, kind of caught up on a lot of the AI work that happened for the last 15 years. And it was amazing. You know, we have Keras, we have TensorFlow, we have frameworks.You know, you can build machine learning applications in days rather than, you know, when I was working on it. And really quickly, I happened upon ethics and I thought to myself, what does ethics got to do with AI? And really quickly it became apparent we have a problem, right, that the probabilistic approach to AI, the so called transformer architecture that we have now, this is only an approximation to what we really want to do.So it was very quick. I just realized that there'll be no end of technical people building the most powerful AI, but how many people really understand the ethical risks from the ground up, from building them and being able to take a view as to how harmful they could be and what those risks were. So I decided this was it.This was exactly what I want to carry on doing. So I worked for a tech company. I headed up AI ethical research for the European division for about a year and a half. And then I went to Lloyds Banking Group as their group head of data and AI ethics. And then NatWest Group, running strategy and AI ethics.And Sanjay, it's amazing. I'm doing the work that I love in an area that I think is really urgent, that we have to pay attention to. So that is my journey over sort of 25, 30 years. Sanjay Podder: Wonderful. And, you know, with the advent of generative AI, this risk landscape just gets more complex, right? Or responsible AI, you mentioned trust, ethics, you know, safety of AI. You know, one thing that brought both of us together was a very different aspect, which is sustainability of AI. You know, when we first connected over the topic, it was about environmental impact of AI.And what I have observed myself is that traditional, you know, responsible AI frameworks, they tend to ignore the environmental impact largely, but that is changing. What has been your observation? Do you think sustainability should be a first class citizen when we look at a responsible AI framework? Paul Dongha: Sanjay, absolutely. And I think what really triggered it, was the launch of the transformer architecture. The famous 'attention is all you need' paper. And when that was embodied within ChatGPT, we started looking at actually how much compute is involved in just satisfying a simple prompt.And there are billions of, they're called FLOPs, floating point operations. And when you really look at that architecture, you think, wow, that is really quite something. Compared to a Google search pre gen AI, when you compare the two, you realize this is a significant undertaking. And imagine scaling that up, not just for ChatGPT but for applications for different use cases, cross industries, the consumer market, as well as the corporate market.This technology is so diffuse and has permeated everyone's lives. It became really apparent that this wasn't going to be a technology that just large corporations can use. It's going to be a technology that's just used everywhere and used everywhere very quickly. And some people talk about exponential acceleration and so on.And I came to realize, actually, we really need to pay attention to this, although it was talked about the kind of the side of ethics. So if you look at the, the EU's high level expert group, when they came up with their seven responsible pillars of

CXO Bytes host Sanjay Podder is joined by May Yap, Senior Vice President and CIO of Jabil, to talk about the intersection of green IT, responsible AI, and sustainable manufacturing. May shares how Jabil integrates renewable energy, circular economy principles, and AI-driven solutions into its global operations, contributing to its recognition as one of America's Most Responsible Companies. The discussion delves into Jabil's ambitious sustainability goals, including achieving carbon neutrality by 2045, and highlights initiatives such as energy-efficient manufacturing, water conservation, and e-waste management. May also emphasizes the importance of responsible AI and green IT practices like desktop-as-a-service, no-code platforms, and energy-efficient algorithms in driving sustainable innovation across Jabil's manufacturing and supply chain ecosystems.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInMay Yap: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:America's Most Responsible Companies 2025 - Newsweek Rankings [07:11]Data centres & networks - IEA [11:08]Jabil Makes Meaningful Sustainability Progress, Releases Fiscal Year 2022 Report [15:59]Electronic waste (e-waste) | WHO [19:27]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of CXO Bytes, Sanjay Podder is hosted by Beliz Kudat to talk about the dual role of technology in driving sustainability while also contributing to environmental challenges. They explore how businesses can integrate sustainable strategies into their technology operations to minimize carbon footprints, optimize data center energy consumption, and leverage tools like AI and cloud solutions responsibly. Sanjay highlights actionable techniques such as carbon-aware scheduling, efficient coding practices, and emerging tools to measure the energy impact of AI. The discussion also emphasizes the business value of sustainability, including improved ESG scores, employee attraction, and outperforming competitors in shareholder returns, making sustainable technology a critical strategic imperative for organizations.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInBeliz Kudat: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Key Findings Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2023 - Central Statistics Office) [10:55]Carbon Aware SDK [12:54]CarbonCloud [15:40]Impact Framework 15:56]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Beliz Kudat: Okay, Sanjay, welcome to our business summit. Sanjay Poddar: Thank you so much for having me today. My pleasure. Beliz Kudat: It's a pleasure having you. So, you know, in today's rapidly developing digital technologies and this digital transformation, a significant dilemma arises, especially for sustainability. And on one hand, these technologies offer substantial, huge potential to address environmental issues.And on the other hand, there exists an entire substantial resource consumption. So first, we'd like to start by asking your perspective on this and how can technologies both solve and exacerbate environmental problems? Sanjay Poddar: Great question. And there's a duality here between technology and sustainability. You know, when you look at sustainability, and if you look at sustainable development goals that we have, the 17 sustainable development goals, one thing that strikes you that they are exponential in nature.The impact is huge. You know, we are not talking about small things. We are talking about scale. And you cannot do anything at scale without technology. And in this case, if we talk about information communication technology, we talk about artificial intelligence, for example, these are precisely the kind of tools we need today to address the sustainability challenges that we are facing, whether is it climate change, whether it is, you know, issues of building a more inclusive society, for example, biodiversity destruction that is happening. Each of these areas, you need technology, you need AI, you need blockchain, you know, you need digital, right? There is no second thought about it. In fact, we did a survey of companies and we found out that 70 percent of the companies we surveyed, who were able to reduce the carbon emissions in the production, in their operation, they were able to do it because they use artificial intelligence.Now, so there is absolutely no question about the role of technology in sustainability. But what we miss out is, you know, if we are not using this technology in the right way, in the right manner, technology itself has a carbon footprint. Technology can cause a big environmental impact. For example, technology can amplify the issues of bias.For example, privacy. So, we have to make sure that while we use this technology, we have to use it in a very sustainable and responsible way. And the data points, are very interesting. For example, the same AI that is going to help us so much. You know, if you look at AI, you know, you take a large language model like Bloom, which is open source, so some of the data we have, we know.A 160, 176 billion parameter model. When they trained it, you know, I think the carbon emission out of it is somewhere around 24.7 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. And if you look at all its life cycle, including the embodied carbon of the hardware on which it was trained, it goes up to 50 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, for example.And if you take larger models, you know, all the more popular large language models, they may go as high as 500 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. So the same technology that is helping us on one hand is also causing emission, carbon emission. And the impact is not just restricted there, as we know. It is also on other resources like water.You know, we can, you do some, you know, very harmless query to your, you know, the large language models for some questions, "where do I, which other cities I should visit in Turkey in my next trip to Turkey?" Right? You know, you asked 20, 30 questions. Behind the scene, that's half a liter of water that was used.For cooling the data centers, for generation of electricity, and we also know about the other dimension about energy use. So, that's the whole thing. Now, the good part is, we don't necessarily have to have such a severe impact. There are tools and techniques and methods whereby we can design, develop, deploy these systems in a way that they are much more, having lower impact on the environment.For example, they are safeguarding privacy, they give you much more safer response, so you know, there's less bias. So overall, it is very much possible to bring a culture such that the software you write is more sustainable and more responsible. So that's the silver lining, right? So to your first question, a big duality.If you are in business, therefore your strategy, your technology and sustainability strategy needs to be integrated. And you have to look at it very holistically, not just at sustainability by technology. And "how do I use tech to do sustainability," but sustainability in technology, "how do I make sure that the technology is being used in a much more sustainable and responsible way?"Beliz Kudat: Yeah. This is the crucial question as you said, and technology is crucial, as you mentioned in all those sustainability efforts as well. And we also know that software is at the core of all these technologies and companies need to adapt the way software is designed, developed, deployed, as you said, and used to minimize its carbon footprint.So how can they achieve this? Sanjay Poddar: Well, you know, the software stack, there are many decarbonization levers in the software stack. When you talk about a software stack, there's obviously the code itself, which has to be written in a manner that it makes less demand on the underlying hardware, for example, right?So you need to bring that kind of design patterns, architectures, choice of programming languages, all that have a bearing on the emissions or the energy use and emissions. For example, you know, there is a whole study about interpreted languages and compiled languages. You know, a language like C++, if you write a code and you write a similar code for doing the same thing with Python, obviously it is found that the C++ code will need less energy and will emit less carbon.Now, not to say that people have to write in C++ but it's just a data point that, are you even thinking about, you know, which language are you selecting? And then there are, around architectures, for example. And then a very interesting decarbonization lever is the migration of your workloads to hyperscalers, for example, to the cloud.And why does that reduce emission? Because the hyperscalers because of the scale and investments, they invest a lot in renewable energy. They have the right technology, like they use AI, for example, to make sure that their data centers are run with a relatively lower power usage, efficiency, what we call the PUE.So they have the elasticity because of economy of scale. Their utilizations are higher, so the idle time of hardware is less. And now if you see, there is, you know, a lot of investment in what they call the custom silicon chip. And that's the next big thing where you write software with the underlying hardware in mind, optimizing the capabilities of the underlying chips.And now, when you do all this, you know, the code you write, the system you build, it needs less energy. And also because this, cloud centers are typically, you know, you can select where you want to put your workload. You can select a location if your business strategy permits, where the carbon intensity of electricity is lower. In other words, the electricity is more generated by renewable energy, for example. As a result of this, not only you're using less energy, you're also, you know, emitting less carbon. And there are similar decarbonization levers even in the field of AI. You can, you know, you don't need to take the biggest of the large language models.You know, you don't need to use models with billions and trillions of parameters. You have to use the model which is fit for purpose. You have to use the model which gives you the required accuracy. And there are a lot of startups coming up in this field that allow you to do, for example, dynamic routing to a large language model, which has less emission, for example, right?And in the field of AI, a number of different techniques, you can do pruning, quantization. You can write your prompts in a way, you know, so that the overall emissions are lower. It's called green prompt

Host Sanjay Podder is joined by a guest who embodies what it means to lead with purpose in the digital age. Niklas Sundberg is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Kuehne+Nagel, one of the world’s leading logistics companies, with a mission to drive sustainable change across the supply chain industry.Niklas is a trailblazer in sustainable IT, author of Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders, and a respected voice on the role technology plays in building a sustainable future. His work goes beyond the logistics sector to shape the conversation on how technology leaders can achieve climate goals and navigate the challenges of data and energy efficiency.They explore how Kuehne+Nagel’s Vision 2030 aligns with sustainability initiatives and the Green Software Foundation’s Climate Commitments. From data storage practices to carbon-aware computing, they uncover what it takes to create a truly sustainable digital ecosystem. Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInNiklas Sundberg: LinkedIn | Book | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Tackling AI’s Climate Change Problem | MIT Sloan Management Review [16:00]E-waste challenges of generative artificial intelligence | Nature [23:40]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Hello, welcome to another episode of CXO Bytes, where we bring you unique insights into the world of sustainable software development from the view of the C suite. I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Today, we are joined by a guest who embodies what it means to lead with purpose in the digital age. Niklas Sundberg is the Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Kuehne+Nagel, one of the world's leading logistics company with a mission to drive sustainable change across the supply chain industry.Niklas is a trailblazer in sustainable IT, author of Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders and a respected voice on the role of technology in building a sustainable future. His work goes beyond the logistic sector to shape the conversation on how technology leaders can achieve climate goals and navigate the challenges of data and energy efficiency.Today we will dive into how Kuehne+Nagel's Vision 2030 aligns with sustainability initiatives and the Green Software Foundation's climate commitments. From data storage practices to carbon aware computing, we'll uncover what it takes to create a truly sustainable digital ecosystem. Niklas, thank you for joining us on CXO Bytes.Welcome to the show. Please can you introduce yourself?Niklas Sundberg: Thank you, Sanjay. Very happy to be here. Yes. I'm Niklas Sundberg. I'm the Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Kuehne+Nagel and I'm very looking forward to our conversation here today. I'm also a member of the board of SustainableIT.org, which is a sister organization to Green Software Foundation and we do some work together as well to advance the field of sustainabilitywithin technology. So really looking forward to our conversation to hear and also share your journey into this.Sanjay Podder: Thanks Niklas. So my first question Niklas, you have just come off the back of Kuehne+Nagel's first ever Tech Summit, Beyond Boundaries; where a lot of focus was on the role of AI and innovation in logistics. Can you share some of the AI driven solutions Kuehne+Nagel is implementing and how they are transforming the logistics landscape?Niklas Sundberg: Sure, happy to, it was a great event, internal where we discussed not only about AI, but also, how we unlock data and traceability, asset tracking and so forth, real time, ETAs and so forth. So if I could just share some examples that we are working on that, I can talk publicly about it would be, how we work with customer service, for example, to be able to use an agent to respond to customer inquiries, both internally and externally, for example, and here we have scaled that out to a number of agents, but now we're looking to actually take the next step and scale it out to about 10-11, 000 people of the population.So really a mass adoption at scale, which I think is quite tremendous. And this type of use case can also be scaled across other types of functions like HR, finance, and other types of business units. Another one, which is maybe not that obvious, but extremely powerful in our business, where data is extremely important.The data quality is paramount when you speak to our customers because everybody wants to automate the whole supply chain flow as much as possible. What we talk about is e-touch, where we want to make the processes as streamlined as possible, run without human intervention, and so forth. And here we actually see that we can use gen AI to clean up our data and also staying clean.And we see that we actually get better results than a human would get where maybe we get about 70 percent quality with a human correcting, cleaning data and so forth. But with a gen AI agent, we get up to north of 95 percent data quality and also helps us to stay clean. And obviously this is very cost efficient as well.So we see a cost improvement of 95 percent on this use case. Another one I think is quite exciting is estimated time of arrival. So, together with our customers that they share data with us so that we can give them better ETAs when things will be arriving at port, arriving at a warehouse, and so forth.This leads to that the customers will have better staff planning, for example, they don't have to pay for excessive overtime, they get a better flow of goods into their warehouses, for example. So this is something that really benefits our customers, so to say.A fourth one, which is not that related to AI, would also be, how we do asset tracking, across the world, because I think this is extremely important. Where is my goods? Has it arrived at the airport? Has it passed customs? So to say, so not only looking at it from a wide perspective and looking at it from it has arrived at the airport, but also looking at the opportunity of geofencing, for example, so really very precise identity of where the goods are, so to say.So, really excited about what we're doing about our digital ecosystem. And a lot of our customers are also quite excited about this. And just to put this a little bit into perspective, when I looked at the numbers last year, we were roughly trading at one and a half billion messages per year with our customers and partners.So that's an extreme number, but we're actually continuously growing by 30%. So, the power of the digital ecosystem is extremely powerful where we can really integrate seamlessly into our customers, and make their operations run more smoothly.Sanjay Podder: Excellent, and I think the last point you made about how the number, you're scaling up your whole digital ecosystem, right? And it, it makes me wonder. about the sustainability implication, because I know, Kuehne+Nagel's vision 2030 to build a, you know, trusted and sustainable supply chain. My, my, the question that pops up in my mind, Niklas, is when you try to use all these wonderful technologies, generative AI, you spoke about customer support, accuracy of information;some of the challenges of technologies like gen AI is, for example, hallucination. you know, how do you make it bias free explainable when you have to exactly say where is the, you know, the good in the supply chain? So a lot of this risk that comes with gen AI. What we also talk about responsible AI risk. I would like to hear a little bit more from you on you know, how are you making this wonderful new transformation responsible so that, you know, there is less bias, there is more accuracy? You know, you spoke about the data, is the data free of bias? So yeah, can you just educate the audience and me a little bit more on what, how you're thinking about this dimension?Niklas Sundberg: Yeah, for sure. So I think it's important, regardless of any technology that you work with, that you're not trying to go out and find a problem to, with the technology, so to say. It's important to identify what is the problem that you're trying to solve. So what we have adopted internally, And we, within our responsible AI policy, we have nine principles that we are, or are, are really sort of targeting and communicating wide across.It's all obviously about data privacy, it's to make sure that we put a human in the loop, it's that we build AI in a sustainable way, that we are conscious about energy consumptions, water, and so forth. The key thing to adopt this technology is, is really to think about, the problem. What problem are we trying to solve?And then, secondly, the people. We always need to make sure that we have a people, a person in the loop regarding the technology when we buy. Because I think we are also in a nascent state with gen AI. We talked about hallucination. We also need to make sure that we continue to build trust in this. And I think this will take some time.So we really enforce a strong force that point that we also need to have a people aspect into this. And then the third thing is that we need to be principle driven. So coming back to the nine principles that we have, derived as part of our responsible AI policy. So to really sum up, it's three P's, which is quite easy to, remember.Problem, people, and principle.San

In this episode of CXO Bytes, George Maddaloni, CTO of Operations at Mastercard, joins Sanjay Podder to discuss how Mastercard is driving innovation in sustainable technology through green software practices. George shares insights on the company's approach to reducing energy consumption in software development, the role of AI and data in enhancing sustainability, and the importance of fostering a culture of green software from the top down. He also highlights Mastercard’s collaboration with the Green Software Foundation and how the organization is helping to shape their ESG goals. From edge computing to responsible AI, George provides a comprehensive look at how Mastercard is balancing technological advancement with environmental responsibility.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInGeroge Maddaloni: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Quantum cyber threats are likely years away. Why — and how — we're working today to stop them | Mastercard Events  | Mastercard If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXOBytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting Chiefs of Information, Technology, Sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Poddar.Hello. Welcome to another episode of CXOBytes where we try to get into the world of sustainable software development from the perspective of the C-Suite. Today, I am extremely delighted to have a special guest, George Maddaloni. George is the CTO of Operations at Mastercard. I would like to talk to George today more about how Mastercard, a leading payment giant, is navigating the intersection of technology and sustainability. Also, Mastercard has been a member of the Green Software Foundation. So what has been the role of the foundation to help shape Mastercard's approach to sustainable technology? And finally, also talk a little bit about the future of sustainable technology the context of financial services. George, welcome to the podcast.George Maddaloni: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it and looking forward to it. Sanjay Podder: Absolutely. And I'm so delighted about the contribution George is having in the field of sustainable technology.It's very rare to find a CIO who is so passionate about this topic. So this is going to be a great conversation. Before we dive further, I would like to give a reminder that all the things we discuss will be available and linked to the show note below the episode.So George,why don't we start with a few words from you about Mastercard and about yourself.George Maddaloni: Yeah, sure. So, George Maddaloni, CTO of operations for Mastercard. And maybe I'll start with some things that probably most people know about Mastercard and then lead into a little bit that, from a technology perspective, you don't.Mastercard connects billions of individuals and businesses to the digital economy and makes them an equal part of, or an inclusive part of that economy and really views its mission as enabling, empowering people as well as powering economies so that anybody that's out there, whether they're paying their bills, buying their groceries, they have that capability. And from a technology perspective,that means a lot in terms of what Mastercard does on a day to day basis. Every product we offer is a technology product. And for my team, that goes back to the mission that we have, which is to provide reliable, scalable, secure, and sustainable, technology platforms to continue to transform the payments industry.We, the team itself runs a vast network, that connects those billions of people to hundreds of millions of acceptance points, thousands of financial institutions, and back to many data centers around the world. To make all of that happen on a global basis, in a very low latency manner, because time matters in our business, and I really use this phrase within Mastercard that we're running a cardiovascular system of the company,and it's why our team is one of the larger technology divisions in the company and has a really front row seat to all the innovation, all of the product development that occurs and it helps also enable all of the employee technology across globe for the company. So, it's a great job. Something I'm really passionate about is technology, and it's great have the Sanjay Podder: opportunity to lead such a great team. Fantastic, George. And there cannot be a better use case for sustainability, given what you are trying to do at an enterprise scale, and I'm curious I have seen you as a person who deeply cares about sustainable technology. You have got recently the board of sustainableIT.org, Mastercard has been a member, a very important member of the Green Software Foundation. What makes you feel that this is an area that you are, that is important and you are particularly passionate about? What drives that passion? George Maddaloni: Yeah, I think, first off, the impact that technology has is great, but you can absolutely see that the growth that is occurring in the technology landscape, at no time, have, has technology been more important to everybody's day to day life than now. And I think as we think about our ESG goals as a company, all across ESNG, that Mastercard is a place that really deeply cares about those goals. We've put actually, both executive and our own compensation goals around that. And it's important as I said, that we're not just impacting, here for the business, but we're here for the world and the impact that we're making on the world, across those goals.So as a technologist, it's kind of natural to be understanding what's happening from an energy perspective.And for me, this became a little bit of how are we managing consumption in a more efficient way as things are growing? And a little bit of a platform for, to help, my team understand that consumption, and make sure that we're making the right choices.so I think it was both, "hey, macro level, this is having an impact, from an energy perspective." Even at a micro level or in a day to day decision making, how can we use that lens to think about the consumption we're about to put forward for a project or a refresh or software development, and what is that going to mean in terms of our overall footprint? Sanjay Podder: Fantastic. George, it just reinforces the conviction we had in the Green Software Foundation that while we focus a lot on the developers and how we enable them to write greener code, what is actually required is a culture of green software or sustainable tech. A culture that comes right from the top and you kind of reinforce that because unless it comes from the top, sustainability will never be a first class concern in your software development process. So that in some sense is the essence behind this podcast series where we are able to articulate what are leaders like you doing to make this real, make, it should not be academic, but it should be actionable, you know? And, this is great to hear from you. Very recently, I read a nice article from Mastercard, your Technology Trends 2024, extremely insightful. And I like the three areas that you have articulated, AI, computing, and data. And the question is, you also kind of explored the confluence of AI, computing, and data and how that's going to reshape commerce. And that's very powerful with all the examples. Now, as a consumer I'm also a user of Mastercard Payment. I'm thinking "how does that translate into kind of innovations you foresee happening in the way we do payment as consumers?" Right? And there was a very interesting statement in the report which I really liked.It said that, in the context of computing, it said that it's not about how computing will get more powerful, it's about how do you make that power, how do you distribute that power in an intelligent, trustworthy, and sustainable way?And that's again the interplay of sustainability and technology. So the question that I had in my mind is, as a consumer, how do I see that innovation playing out in the payment process? And how do you balance, therefore, that innovation with the sustainability dimension, given you're thinking about AI and data George Maddaloni: computing. Yeah, ISanjay Podder: computing?George Maddaloni: I'll start actually where you started, back to the culture, and it, does start at the top, the company wasone of the first first payments organizations to really put forward its net zero, an aggressive net zero goal. And that really, again, started the organization rallying around this particular topic. But every, piece of technology and those investments that we're thinking about as well, we're, back to this principle of "are we empowering people?"And a lot of times we have to think about, especially in the world of AI and data, this has been reinforced, what are our principles and how are we going to approach this, specific innovation? So, and you can't enable AI without a key focus on data. I think knows that, especially in the generative AI world, the more data that you have, the more effective that, that model is going to run. so we established a set of data, data, principles, handling principles. One very focused on eliminating bias, another very focused on making sure it's used from an inclusive perspective, and of course consumer protection, at the forefront a lot of the regulation that we're subject to, but much less helping influence. So when you're swiping your Mastercard as you were gracefully articulating, the power of the

CXO Bytes host Sanjay Podder is joined by Prasad Kalyanaraman, David Isaacs and Neil Thompson at the AI-Ready Infrastructure Panel at the AWS Summit in Washington, June 2024. The discussion featured insights on the transformative potential of generative AI, the global semiconductor innovation race, and the impact of the CHIPS Act on supply chain resilience. The panel also explored the infrastructure requirements for AI, including considerations for sustainable data center locations, responsible AI usage, and innovations in water and energy efficiency. The episode offers a comprehensive look at the future of AI infrastructure and its implications for business and sustainability.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInPrasad Kalyanaraman: LinkedInDavid Isaacs: WebsiteNeil Thompson: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:CHIPS and Science Act - Wikipedia [06:46]IMDA introduces sustainability standard for data centres operating in tropical climates [12:54]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting Chiefs of Information, Technology, Sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Poddar.Welcome to another episode of CXO Bytes, where we bring you unique insights into the world of sustainable software development. I am your host Sanjay Poddar. Today we are excited to bring you highlights from a captivating panel discussion at the recent AWS Summit in Washington held in June 2024. The AI-Ready Infrastructure Panel featured industry heavyweights including Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of Infrastructure Services at AWS, David Isaacs from the Semiconductor Industry Association, and renowned researcher Neil Thompson from MIT, and it was chaired by Axios Senior Business Reporter Hope King.During this panel, we take a look at the transformative potential of generative AI, the global race for semiconductor innovation, and the significance of the CHIPS Act in strengthening supply chain resilience. Together, we will hopefully have a better picture of the future of AI infrastructure and the innovations driving this field forward.And before we dive in here, a reminder that everything we talk about will be linked in the show notes below this episode. So without further ado, let's dive into the AI-Ready Infrastructure Panel from the AWS Summit.Prasad Kalyanaraman: Well, well first, for the avoidance of doubt, generative AI is an extremely transformative technology for us. You know, sometimes I liken it to the internet, right, the internet revolution. So, I think there's, we're very early in that journey. I would say that, at least the way we've thought about generative AI, we think about it in three layers of the stack, right?The underlying infrastructure layer is one of them, and I'll get into more details there. And then there is the frameworks. We build a set of capabilities that makes it easy to run generative AI models. And then the third layer is the application layer, which is where, you know, many people are familiar with like chat applications and so on.That's the third layer of the stack, right? Thinking into the infrastructure layer It always starts from, you know, obviously, finding land and pouring concrete and building data centers out of it. And then, on top of it, there's a lot more that goes in inside a data center in terms of the networks that you build, in terms of how you think about electrical systems that are designed for it, how you land a set of servers, what kind of servers do you land, it's not just the GPUs that many people are familiar with, because you need a lot more in terms of storage, in terms of network, in terms of other compute capability.And then you have to actually cluster these, servers together because it's not a single cluster that does these, training models. You can broadly think about generative AIs like training versus inference, and they both require slightly different infrastructure. Hope King: Okay, so talk about the generative, what that needs first, and then the inference.Prasad Kalyanaraman: Yeah, so the training models are typically large models that have, you know, you might have heard the term number of parameters, and typically, think of them as, and there are billions of parameters. So, you take, the content which is actually available out there on the internet and then you start, the models start learning about them.And once they start learning about them, then they start associating weights with different parameters, with different, parts of that content that's there. And so when you ask, the generated AI models, for completing the set of tasks, that's the part which is inference. So you first create the model, which requires large clusters to be built, and then you have, a set of capabilities that allows you to do inference on these models.So outcome of the model training exercise is a model with a different set of parameters and weights. And then inference workloads require these models. And then you merge that with your own customer data, so that customers can actually go and look at it to say, okay, what does, this model produce for my particular use case?Hope King: Okay, let's, and, you know, let's go backwards to, to just even finding the land. Yeah. You know, where are the areas in the world where a company like Amazon AWS is first looking? Where are they, what, are the areas that are most ideal to actually build data centers that will end up?Producing these models and training and all the applications on top of that. Prasad Kalyanaraman: There's a lot of parameters that go into, picking those locations. Well, first, you know, we're a very customer obsessed company, so our customers really tell us that we, that they need, the capacity. But land is one part of the equation.It's actually also about availability of green renewable power, which I'm sure we'll talk about through the course of this conversation. Being able to actually provide enough amounts of power and renewable sources to be able to run these compute capabilities is a fairly important consideration.Beyond that, there are regulations about, like, what kind of, of, content that you can actually process. Then the availability of networks that allows you to connect these, these, servers together, as well as connect them to users who are going to use those models. And finally, it's about the availability of hardware and chips that are capable of processing this. And, you know, I'd say that, this is an area of pretty significant innovation over the last few years now.We've been investing in machine learning chips and machine learning for 12 years now. And so, we have a lot of experience designing these servers. And so it takes network, land, power, regulations, renewable energy and so on. Hope King: David, I want to bring you in here because you know obviously the chips are a very important part of building the entity of AI and the brain and connecting that with the physical infrastructure.Where do you look geographically? What, or your, body of organizations when you're looking at maybe even diversifying the supply chain, to build, you know, even more chips as demand increases. David Isaacs: Yeah, so I think it's around the world, quite frankly, and many of you may be familiar with the CHIPS Act, the past, two years ago here in the US, something very near and dear to my heart.That's resulting in incentivizing significant investment here in the US, and we think that's extremely important to make the supply chain more resilient overall, to help feed the demand that AI is bringing about. I would also add that the green energy that was just alluded to that will also require, substantial, semiconductor innovation and new demand.So we think that improving our, you know, the diversity of chip output, right now it's overly concentrated in ways that are, subject to geopolitical tensions, natural disasters, other disruptions, you know, we saw during the pandemic, the problems that can arise from the supply chain and the problems, I guess most prominently illustrated in the, automotive industry, we don't want that holding up the growth in AI.And so we think that having a more diversified supply chain, including a robust, manufacturing presence here in the US is what we're trying to achieve. Hope King: Is there any area of the world, though, that is safe from any of those risks? I mean, you know, we're in the middle of a heat wave right now, right?And we're, you know, and we're not, and we're gonna talk about cooling because it's an important part. But do you, just to be specific, see any parts of the world that are more ideal to set up these systems and these buildings, these data centers for resiliency going forward? David Isaacs: No, probably not. But just like, you know, your investment portfolio, rule one is to diversify.I think we need a diversified supply chain for semiconductors. And, you know, right now, The US and the world, for that matter, is reliant 92 percent on leading edge chips from the island of Taiwan and the remaining 8 percent from South Korea. You don't need to be a geopolitical genius or a risk analyst to recognize that is dangerous and a problem waiting to happen. So, as a result of the investments we're seeing under the CHIPS Act, we projected, and in a report we issued last month with Boston Consulting Group, that the US will achieve 28 percent of leading edge chip production by 2032. That's

Welcome to the first episode of CXO Bytes! Join host Sanjay Podder as he talks to leaders in technology, sustainability, and AI in their pursuit of a sustainable future through green software. Joined by Dr. Ong Chen Hui, Assistant CEO of Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the discussion focuses on Singapore's comprehensive approach to digital sustainability. Dr. Ong highlights IMDA's efforts to drive green software adoption across various sectors, emphasizing the importance of efficiency in data centers and the broader ICT ecosystem. So join us for an intriguing and though provoking conservation about the critical role of government and industry collaboration in achieving sustainability goals amidst the growing demand for digital technologies.Learn more about our people:Sanjay Podder: LinkedInDr. Ong Chen Hui: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:IMDA [01:20]Government Technology Agency | Singapore [01:54]Singapore Green Plan 2030 [02:55]IMDA and GovTech unveil new initiatives to drive digital sustainability | IMDA - Infocomm Media Development Authority [10:19] Your Guide to the Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends in Software Engineering [10:56]Asia Tech x Singapore [23:37]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification Project | GSF [25:11] Welcome to Impact Framework {33:31]Green Software Foundation [34:00]Digital Sustainability Forum | ATxSummit [37:33]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Sanjay Podder: Hello and welcome to CXO Bytes, a podcast brought to you by the Green Software Foundation and dedicated to supporting chiefs of information, technology, sustainability, and AI as they aim to shape a sustainable future through green software. We will uncover the strategies and a big green move that's helped drive results for business and for the planet.I am your host, Sanjay Podder.Hello everyone. Welcome to CXO Bytes. This is our inaugural podcast on how do you use green software for building a sustainable future. This is a new podcast series and the whole idea behind it is, you know, embracing a culture of green software, it needs to come from the top. And we therefore want to talk with decision makers, with business leaders, with leaders who are running nation states like Singapore, for example, at sea level.You know, how are they driving this culture change when it comes to digital sustainability and green software, for example? Today I am super excited to invite Dr. Ong. She is the Assistant CEO of IMDA, which is the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore. And we are going to chat on how IMDA is championing digital sustainability as well as green software. Welcome, Dr. Ong. Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Thank you for having me on your inaugural podcast on green software.Sanjay Podder: And you know, I had my own selfish reason for inviting you because while the Green Software Foundation has been interacting with many, many large businesses across the world, IMDA and Singapore GovTech, these are two members of Green Software Foundation who represent the government, right?And we all know the very important role that government will play in sustainability in general. So I wanted to understand from you, you know, how are you looking into this space? So we will talk a lot about that. The other aspect is probably to begin with, for our audience, a perspective on what is IMDA.You know, what is your specific remit, what you are trying to do in Singapore, if you can give us, you know, a few insights into that.Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Okay, so here in Singapore, of course, climate change is actually something that is a bit of a existential thing for us, us being a small nation state and we're also an island, to us, climate change and the associated rising sea level is a matter of concern. Right? So, as a result, we have put in a green plan that states our, sustainability goals by the time we reach 2050. And this is actually a whole government effort. So, I don't think it is a case where it's one ministry or one agency that's responsible for the whole world. It is about the whole of government working together in order to make sure that we meet the goals of our Green Plan.Now, what are some of the things that we are doing? Many things, for example, the National Environment Agency is actually rolling out some of the regulations. We have things like e-waste management, for example. Just now you mentioned GovTech, which is our sister agency. GovTech is also rolling out green procurement when they're actually procuring software solutions. Within IMDA, we are responsible for some of the industry development. We're also what we call a sectoral lead of the ICT sector. So, our own green strategy, comprised broadly of three different strokes. The first is about greening ourselves as an organization.The second is really about greening the sector that we are responsible for, that we are leading. So, in that case, there will be things like the telecommunications sector, the media sector. And the third thing we want to do is to enable our ICT solution providers to provide green solutions to the broader economy so that we can scale the adoption, we can ease the friction out there in the ecosystem.So essentially, that's greening ourselves, greening the sector, as the lead. And the third is really to kind of provide solutions through the ecosystem so that the wider community can actually benefit.Sanjay Podder: Now this is really a full 360 degree kind of approach and it is phenomenal. And, I was, I was wondering, you know, and you mentioned briefly on Singapore being an island state. I was thinking, why digital sustainability? What will happen if Singapore decides not to do it, for example, right? Do you have a point of view, say, because, you know, there are many different levers of, sustainability, you know, I can understand the larger sustainability, but what is the importance of digital sustainability?Do you think it's an important enough lever or maybe you can look at nature biodiversity or something else, right? So specifically for digital sustainability. What is it that triggers IMDA that this is a important initiative? And I'm, I'm seeing this is my second year in Asia Tech that, you know, this is something you give a lot of importance to.Bringing in leaders from various organizations. Doing deep deliberation. I also remember last year, you brought out your new data center standards, I think increasing the temperature by one degree that has an implication. If you could throw a little bit more light on digital sustainability in particular,Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Mm hmm.Sanjay Podder: why do you feel that's a very important lever for a country like Singapore and maybe for many other countries around the world?Dr. Ong Chen Hui: Yeah. Well, I think you're actually exactly right that when we are trying to drive sustainability, actually there are many different strokes. Some of it includes looking at energy sources and all that, which actually is also very important for Singapore because we are small. We do, have to look at, different kinds of energy sources and how we can potentially actually import some of them, right?Now, when it comes to digital sustainability, actually our journey, I would say started many years ago. Maybe more than a decade ago, when we started looking at, some of the research work within the research community about, making sure that our data centers, can operate more efficiently in the tropical climate.Now, data centers, comprise of almost a fifth, of the ICT carbon emissions. And because they are such a huge component of the carbon emissions, of course, their efficiency has always been top of the mind. Now in the tropical climate like ours, a large part of the energy sometimes is attributed to the cooling systems, right?The air conditioning that's actually needed to bring the temperatures down. So as you rightly pointed out, what we found out is that actually if you were to increase the temperature by one degree, that can lead to a savings of between two to five percent off. Carbon emissions. So, and that as a result, we have been investing in research within our academia, funding some of the innovation projects with our ITC players, in order to look at what actually works and what doesn't.Because I think in Singapore, regulations always need to be balanced with innovation. So that have kind of, led to what happened last year, which was that we released the first, standards for tropical data sensors. But we wanted to go a lot more, right, because some of those standards, around cooling and all that, that's kind of like looking at how efficient the radiators are in a car.But we also need to look at how efficient the engines are. And the reality is that, if you look at the trends of ICT usage of software applications. I mean, so much of our lives, whether it is watching videos, watching TikTok, right, our education, around all that, most of this have moved to become, to be enabled by digital technologies.And when we look at the consumption of, data centers and the kind of workload in it, it is increasing year by year. Now, with the explosion of AI, we know that the trend is probably that there will be more consumption of digital technologies. And those are the engines that sits withinssb the data centers.And we need to make them efficient. And as a result of that, we have decided that we need to also get onto this journey of greening the software stack. And greening the software stack means a few things. The first is, of course, I think this is still a fairly nascent area. How do we make software more measurable, so that there's a basis of comparison, so that we can identify hot spots that I th

Tech leaders, your balancing act between innovation and sustainability just got a guide with the Green Software Foundation’s latest podcast series, CXO Bytes. In each episode, Sanjay Podder, Chairperson of the Green Software Foundation,  and host of CXO Bytes will be joined by industry leaders to explore strategies to green software and how to effectively reduce software’s environmental impacts while fulfilling a drive for innovation and enterprise growth.So join us for an invigorating chat that will keep you both informed and entertained on CXO Bytes. Just search for CXO Bytes wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterIf you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.