Professor Mark K. Smith, CEO of ContactEngine, discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) can lend itself towards sustainability Not a day goes by without a company, charity, government or some other gas-guzzling, forest-burning, ocean-destroying organisation making a grand claim about net-zero, carbon neutral or otherwise pledging to single-handedly save the planet by twenty-whenever. We'll get the brag out of the way quickly – ContactEngine is already carbon negative – but, following the noise around COP26, the threat of irreversible climate change provides a good reason to discuss sustainability in AI more generally. Cloud-based computing has rightly come under increased scrutiny in recent years for its energy use. Greenpeace estimates that by 2025, the tech sector could consume 20% of the world's electricity, a huge rise from its current 7%, and one that will be largely driven by cloud computing. As it stands, a lot of this energy use doesn't come from renewable sources, with nearly 4% of all CO2 emissions coming from data transfer and infrastructure – a figure 60% higher than aviation.

To navigate through the worldwide Covid-19 health crisis, organisations from every sector have needed to adapt enterprise and customer-facing operations using AI, the cloud and other technologies, to stay relevant for employee and consumer behaviours. The shift to remote working has meant that plans for digital innovation needed to be accelerated, and AI has been key to easing transitions and improving customer experience. Initially, fears were frequently expressed about the evolution of AI meaning that human workers would no longer be needed. But with flaws such as bias and inaccuracies remaining common, the contrary has proven to be the case. "If you've watched any sci-fi film or TV programme, you'll be aware of the fears around AI.," said Samantha Humphries, senior security specialist at Exabeam.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is smart, but it could do better. The software development industry is constantly working to push algorithmic logic beyond the scope of the current computer processing envelope and create new ways for computers to'think' and emulate human beings. We have of course progressed significantly onward from the fanciful notions of AI that were characterized in the Sci-Fi movies of the 1980s. Largely as result of access to massively more powerful processors and massively larger (and eminently accessible) datasets -- and as a result of cloud computing and modern approaches to database management, we can now create an impressive amount of smartness in the AI that we now develop. But AI needs to get smarter.

I'm not sure why, but I think it's the random nature of conversation. If it's a work thing then the conversation is likely to be constrained by the context. So, if I'm speaking at an AI event, about say automating dialogue, then I'm okay… Chances are people will want to talk about something I have a view on. But at a party, all hell can break loose - people start talking about things I have no idea about. Recently someone started a conversation with me that assumed I knew what TOWIE was (I gather it's part soap opera, part reality show and follows the lives, loves and scandals of a group…………well, you get the idea).