Authors: Michelle Thorne

AI Action Summit was a whirlwind. It took some time to processing and digest this summit. Here is a summary of things that went down:

Fantastic work done by the community around the summit

• Beyond Fossil Fuels excellent report showing that new data centres in Europe alone could create up to 121 million tons CO2e more emissions—half the amount that Germany needs to cut by 2030. And could take up to 20% of the renewable energy planned to be built in Europe by 2030. That is almost the same as what the entire transport sector will need to decarbonise itself.
• AI Now’s Sarah Meyers West opening remarks at the summit’s Forum on Sustainable AI (video at 0:36:30). She did a brilliant job setting the scene and sharing the key demands in the joint statement. We also really appreciate their statement before the summit speaking to labor and militarism, in addition to climate concerns.
• Friends of the Earth report on Harnessing AI for Environmental Justice that includes principles and practices to guide climate justice and digital rights campaigners in the responsible use of AI.
• Computer Says Maybe kindly invited us to speak about the statement in their pre-summit episode and we can highly recommend their live debrief episode as well.
• Frugal AI challenge led by Dr. Sasha Luccioni (Hugging Face) and Theó Alves da Costa (Data for Good) demonstrating that limiting resource usage can yield well-performing and effective tools.
• The AI Energy Score project is also a step in the right direction for transparency and helping people choose more energy efficient models.
• Satirical campaign: Save the AI. They use humour to connect your personal needs for Earth’s resources with the evidence of just how much of these resources are now being claimed for the data centres running generative AI. And to make you smile. By connecting your thirst with a data center’s cooling system, we address psychological distance: it is very hard to relate personally to the distant data centers where generative AI models do their work. We are covering water, electricity, air, jobs, and other facets in the coming weeks.
• Mention of the joint statement in this coverage by Tech Crunch.

Political outcomes:

• A Coalition for Sustainable AI was launched, signed by many companies (not the Big Tech giants, more like e.g. Capgemini, IBM, Engie, TotalEnergies, Salesforce), research institutes, investors, international orgs and supported by 13 countries (France, UK, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Chile, Kenya, Korea, India, Cyprus, Norway and Morocco). The Coalition’s statement is very weak and only refers to research, analysis, monitoring initiatives with no reference to fossil fuels or other direct impacts.
• The final statement of the wider AI Action Summit was signed by 58 countries. It mentions making AI sustainable as a principle but is overall quite weak. The US and UK refused to sign it due to language on sustainability and inclusivity.
  • It was announced in that statement that the International Energy Agency in April will launch an observatory on AI and Energy
• Meanwhile, billions and billions of investment in AI / data centres were announced:
  • France announced a 109 billion EUR investment plan including identifying 35 sites around France for new data centres and a whopping 1GW data centre plan with UAE
  • The EU announced a plan to mobilise 200 billion EUR from public and private funds for AI infrastructure in Europe including gigafactories