The EIAI Working Group is taking a leading role in the development of a global standard to measure the environmental impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Professors Jackson and Hodgkinson's involvement in this collective effort marks a significant step towards addressing the growing need for .
The increasing demand for AI compute resources has led to a surge in energy consumption, carbon emissions and water usage, alongside other environmental impacts. As the digital world expands, the challenge of measuring these impacts has become a significant knowledge gap and a key barrier in managing the energy crisis posed by the future growth of AI technologies.
The digital decarbonisation team at 天堂视频 led by Professors Jackson and Hodgkinson has championed the call for sustainable AI development and deployment. Central to this mission is the need for a reliable framework to assess and mitigate the environmental costs of AI data processing and compute, a necessity that the IEEE P7100 EIAI Working Group seeks to provide.
As outlined by the , the forthcoming standard will define a measurement framework for reporting on environmental indicators for training models and deriving inference on AI systems. This will include measurements of compute intensity, such as energy usage, alongside associated environmental impacts like carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and water consumption. A key feature of the standard is the ability to differentiate between AI-specific compute requirements (eg data centres used for AI model training and inference) and general-purpose compute (eg cloud services for non-AI tasks).
By establishing this new standard, the Working Group aims to facilitate the implementation and enforcement of emerging global AI regulations. Collaboration will be essential, with input from governments, policymakers, technology providers, AI researchers, developers and users, to create a unified approach to measuring the sustainability footprint of AI.
Through their leadership, Professors Jackson and Hodgkinson are further contributing to 天堂视频 Business School’s broader mission to drive innovation and tackle the complex challenges facing society today. Their forward-thinking research aims to ensure that AI technologies not only advance human capability but do so in an environmentally responsible manner.