While we don’t publish a podcast ourselves about more sustainable tech or reaching a fossil free internet, but we do show up on other podcasts fairly regularly. Read on to find out where we showed up in June, and why the topics we covered are relevant to responsible technologists.
Environment Variables – Is Using LLMs for Tech Standards Work Actually Greener?
Environment Variables is the podcast of the Green Software Foundation, that has been hosted by our Director of Technology and Policy, Chris Adams, since 2022. As mentioned before, we (the Green Web Foundation) are leading on the development of SCI Web Standard, within the larger industry body, the Green Software Foundation, and in collaboration with the W3C.
The approach being taken though, is rather different from the typical, multi-year standards process, experimenting with thoughtful use of AI language models to address some of the challenges of how standards are usually made.
This podcast is a deep dive into how it’s works, with Joseph Cook the designer of the Harmony, the system used to manage the deliberation process. It covers the theory behind deliberative decision making, and the technical considerations when designing a system intended for new standards design.
Why is it worth your time?
If you forgive the clickbait title (the short answer is “the jury is out, especially until suppliers disclose actual numbers”), this is gives a good idea of how technical standards are developed, as well as where new technologies like languages models can help, and where they can’t.
In addition to touching on the specifics how language models are used when developing new standard specs, how the resource consumption compares to the alternative of video calls, and physical travel.
It also touches on the some of the architectural decisions to make to avoid being locked into a single provider that apply to building AI systems as much as other technical systems – something that comes up when during the process the team learned that Anthropic started running AI inference out of the infamous Colossus-1 datacentre, in a well known “sacrifice zone” in Tennessee.
CRTL+ALT Sustain – An internet free of fossil fuels with Hannah Smith
Ctrl+Alt Sustain is the official podcast of the UK government digital sustainability alliance, and in this podcast our Director of Operations, Hannah Smith gives the low down on our latest report the State of the Fossil Free Internet, which at the time of recording, was about to go live, and is now visible at fossilfree.greenweb.org.
Why is it worth your time?
Not only will you get a good audio summary of the key ideas in our latest report, if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet. You’ll hear about the three core things needed to reach a fossil free internet – to reduce the demand, to green the energy, to change the ownership models.
You’ll also hear a nice conversation about the steps you can take as a member of society instead of just as a techie, why you can’t just look at carbon when you think about the environmental impact of technology.
