The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence: How Generative AI Threatens the Renewable Energy Transition, and who Stands to Benefit from it

  • Panel
  • Grande Halle
  • Wednesday 21.05 — 17:20 - 18:40

Organising Institution

AlgorithmWatch

Germany

AlgorithmWatch is a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Berlin and Zurich. We fight for a world where algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) do not weaken justice, human rights, democracy and sustainability, but strengthen them.
  • Academic 2
  • Business 2
  • Policy 2
You’ve read the news: A Three Mile Island reactor will be restarted to power Microsoft's AI operations (this was the site of a nuclear meltdown in 1979), Google’s emissions climbed nearly 50% over the last five years due to AI energy demand, and the only thing impressive about Amazon’s claim that it uses green energy is the chutzpah with which it lies about its creative accounting. Still, if you think you have a good idea of generative AI’s resource demands, think again. The snippets above only present the tip of the iceberg. To show what’s at stake, we will not only present the latest evidence on energy demand for the entire value chain of AI, including hardware production – we will also explain how it threatens the transition to renewable energy and the stability of the grid, aka critical infrastructure.

Questions to be answered

  1. What do we know about resource consumption of generative AI?
  2. What implications does the resource consumption have for the green transition?
  3. What implications does the resource consumption have for the development path of Artificial Intelligence (what alternatives to “brute force” large models and Deep Learning based on very large datasets are on the table)?
  4. What governance tools are needed and available to reconcile AI development with planetary boundaries?

Moderator

Matthias Spielkamp

AlgorithmWatch - Germany

Matthias Spielkamp is founder and executive director of AlgorithmWatch, a non-profit based in Berlin and Zurich that fights for a world where algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are used to strengthen justice, human rights, democracy, and sustainability – instead of surveillance, control and punishment. He is a member of the advisory council to the German Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), elected by the German Bundestag. Matthias testified before committees of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the German Bundestag and other institutions on automation and AI and was a member of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) from 2020-2022.Bundestag and other institutions on automation and AI and was a member of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) from 2020-2022.

Speaker

Jill McArdle

Beyond Fossil Fuels - Ireland

Jill is International Corporate Campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels. Her work focuses on the energy and emissions footprint of data centres, and corporate accounting for carbon emissions including the need for 24/7 renewable energy matching. Prior to joining Beyond Fossil Fuels, Jill spent 8 years working in Brussels on EU policies on sustainable corporate governance, research & innovation, access to medicines and international development. including over four years at Friends of the Earth Europe leading European and global campaigns on supply chain due diligence laws. Jill holds a PhD in philosophical theories of global justice from the University of Dublin. She is Irish, and has lived in Brussels for the last decade.

Speaker

Fanny Hidvégi

AI Collaborative - Hungary

Fanny is Policy Director at AI Collaborative (https://collaborative.ai/), the organisation behind Current AI (https://www.currentai.org/latest-updates/launchpressrelease). Before joining the AI Collaborative, Fanny most recently led Access Now’s policy and advocacy team in Europe, and where she served in several key roles since 2016. Prior to her time with Access Now, Fanny was an International Privacy Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington D.C. and the head of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Program for the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, where she now serves as chair of the board.

Speaker

Claude Turmes

Independent - Luxembourg

Claude was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2018 and then Minister for Energy and Minister for Spatial Planning in Luxembourg from December 2018 until 2023. In parliament, he first served on the Committee on Budgetary Control before joining the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy in 2002. In this capacity, he served as rapporteur on the 2008 draft of the EU Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC and on the EU Energy Efficiency Directive 2012. Between 2007 and 2008, he was a member of the Temporary Committee on Climate Change. He also represented the Parliament at the 2008 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań, and the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakesh.

Speaker

Boris Ruf

AXA - France

Boris Ruf is an AI Researcher at AXA, where he leads the sustainable AI initiative at group level. His research focuses on standardizing carbon footprint scenarios and developing methods to assess and mitigate the environmental impact of generative AI. He has published several research articles on responsible AI and his work has been referenced by various international organizations, regulatory bodies, and mainstream media. Boris regularly gives guest lectures at educational institutions, with his most recent engagements including the EU Supervisory Digital Finance Academy at IEU in Florence and the Data for Sustainability Master’s program at the Albert School in Paris. Boris holds a MSc in Computer Science from EPFL.