Welcome! to Issue One of the Tomorrow's Tech Today newsletter accompanying the podcast series with the full discussion related to this piece available here. The world is looking for organizations who stand for something. Indeed recent research by the Edelman Trust Barometer 2021 shows people now typically trust your business more than their country's government, news media, and even NGOs. So as we reflect on our aspirations and indeed resolutions for 2022 and the'moments which matter' to take forward from last year, the rise in prominence of Sustainability as a core component of business model evolution, alongside – the Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) – continuum is personally very much front of mind. Especially building on attending events such as COP26, the Social Innovation Forum, Re:Invent and now CES2022 where this has been center stage.

The Sustainable AI Lab of the University of Bonn is on a mission at COP26 in Glasgow While there is a growing number of research publications directed towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the Sustainable Development Goals, there is little research addressing, the often hidden, environmental costs of AI. The Sustainable AI Lab of the University of Bonn (Germany) addresses this topic and is present at COP26 with a unique artwork to remind people of what nature is doing and that AI is getting in the way of this. The head of the Lab, Prof. Aimee van Wynsberghe, will speak at the conference on November 10th at 11:00. AI and environmental injustice Artificial intelligence (AI) can be an important tool for sustainable development to minimize energy usage in large factories or to predict natural disasters before they happen. However, these uses can also have a downside.

Tackling the climate crisis is going to require a combined scientific, industrial, public and governmental effort on a scale that has never been seen before. It's little wonder, then, that the eyes of the world will be on Glasgow this weekend as COP26 gets underway. The goals of this UN climate change conference include reducing greenhouse gas emissions (with a target of global net zero by 2050), and protecting communities and natural habitats by making infrastructure and agriculture more resilient to future climate changes. Data science and artificial intelligence (AI) will have a crucial role to play in achieving these aims, allowing us to fully exploit the rapid growth in environmental data from sensors, remote sensing satellites and increasingly powerful numerical weather and climate models, to transform our understanding of the complex interactions between the environment, climate, ecosystems, and human social and economic systems. The sheer volume of data that needs to be assessed for developing sustainable pathways to net zero means that human decision-making needs to be augmented with AI.

August 24, 2021 – Congratulations to Montreal-based start-up BrainBox AI, which is one of 10 companies--and the only Canadian company, it says--selected to present at COP26's "Tech for our planet" program, an initiative at the upcoming 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference. BrainBox was selected by the U.K. government to display its technology in Challenge 3–Thinking Smart, which is dedicated to solutions that can capture and share data to better predict and manage energy consumption. In the three months leading to COP26 (being held in November in Glasgow), BrainBox will demonstrate the benefits of grid-interactive buildings to achieve net zero objectives for the electrical grid. "By implementing technologies like BrainBox AI in one of the world's greatest energy consumers--buildings--we can turn the tide and help the real estate industry play its part in stopping the effects of climate change," said Sam Ramadori, president, BrainBox AI. Currently installed in over 100 million sf of real estate across 17 countries, BrainBox's flagship product combines AI and cloud computing to create a fully autonomous commercial HVAC solution that reduces energy consumption and emissions.