Climate change and artificial intelligence are two of the most pressing and transformative topics of our time. As we navigate the complexities of the climate crisis, the hot topic at Climate Week NYC was the role of AI in both contributing to and mitigating climate challenges.
This blog post shares key takeaways and resources to help you on your sustainable AI journey.
1.“Don’t DIY your AI”
This was the mantra at the Climate & AI Summit co-hosted by Salesforce and NVIDIA during Climate Week NYC. Every company and organization needs a sustainable, trusted AI strategy. But not every company needs to build, train and deploy their own in-house models. In fact, that will generally be the least carbon and cost effective approach.
In order to maximize efficiency, ROI, and sustainability, companies need to understand the environmental impacts of the full AI lifecycle, and take steps to make AI models and usage more energy efficient.
At Salesforce, our sustainable AI strategy focuses on 3 things:
- Optimizing models
- Utilizing efficient hardware
- Prioritizing low-carbon data centers
2. AI agents, together with humans, can scale impact
Throughout Climate Week NYC, we heard many exciting use cases from ecopreneurs who are using AI to drive climate action. Conversations centered on how AI-powered agents will transform industries.
The use cases for how agents can support sustainability and climate objectives are vast. Just to name a couple:
- Good360 will optimize disaster response logistics with Agentforce, ensuring donated goods reach the right communities efficiently, reducing waste and emissions.
- Groundswell will leverage Agentforce to enroll low-income, energy-burdened households into solar programs.
We are also excited about how ESG data integration, reporting, and operations agents in Net Zero Cloud will help the Salesforce Sustainability team reduce time and resources required for reporting.
3. AI optimism, despite risks
Yes, experts agree that energy and water consumption will increase due to AI and the verdict is still out on what the overall impact of AI will be on the planet, but the excitement at Climate Week NYC around the potential of AI to address climate challenges was palpable. When we polled Climate & AI Summit attendees about the overall environmental impact of AI in the long-term, 45% said positive, compared to 35% who said neutral or unsure, and 20% who said negative.
While the rise of AI comes with pressing climate risks, sustainable AI strategies and responsible innovation present an incredible opportunity to accelerate climate action at scale.
Tools to help build your sustainable AI strategy
As we’re all navigating our AI journeys, here are some resources to develop a sustainable, trusted AI strategy:
- Visit Trailhead to learn to how to build a sustainable AI strategy
- Dive into the Salesforce Blueprint for Sustainable AI
- Learn about the Salesforce Sustainable AI Policy Principles
- Meet Agentforce, a set of tools to create and customize agents as well as a suite of agents that will enable you to extend your teams to get work done faster.
- Explore Net Zero Cloud AI Innovations