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#9 – Can AI Be Green? The Truth About Data, Power, and Planet [Silicon Valley's Pascal Joly]
“Sustainable AI means using AI without destroying the planet.” – Pascal Joly
What if the next great challenge for AI isn’t bias or privacy — but energy?
In this episode of The AI Lyceum™, Samraj Matharu speaks with Pascal Joly, a Silicon Valley product leader turned sustainability advocate, to unpack the true cost of intelligence: the carbon, water, and energy footprint behind AI.
Pascal combines decades in cloud and DevOps with environmental science, helping organisations cut emissions and build greener systems — including AI Wattch, an open-source tool he built to track LLM emissions in real time with Antarctica, a climate-tech firm. Together, they explore how to balance innovation with planetary limits — and why sustainability may be AI’s defining test.
From the greenwashing vs. greenhushing debate to tools like Electricity Maps, AI Wattch, and the AI Energy Score by Hugging Face.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
0:00 ➤ Introducing Pascal
3:15 ➤ What “Sustainable AI” Really Means
7:00 ➤ How AI Creates CO₂ and Water Impact
10:40 ➤ The Data Centre Energy Race
14:10 ➤ Green IT vs. GreenOps Explained
17:00 ➤ What Consumers Can Actually Do
18:30 ➤ Tools: Electricity Maps, AI Watch, CodeCarbon, AI Energy Score
22:45 ➤ Using AI for Sustainability (Climate Tech Examples)
26:00 ➤ Training vs. Inference – The True Energy Split
30:10 ➤ Making AI Development Sustainable
37:00 ➤ Greenwashing, Greenhushing & Corporate Truths
43:00 ➤ Recycling Heat and Water in Data Centres
45:30 ➤ Small Language Models & Embedded AI
49:00 ➤ The “Swiss Army Knife vs. Chef’s Knife” Analogy
52:00 ➤ Why Pascal Is Cautiously Optimistic
54:00 ➤ Audience Question: How Concerned Are You About AI’s Footprint?
KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED
➤ What does “sustainable AI” really mean in practice?
➤ How do AI models create carbon and water emissions?
➤ Which tools can measure AI’s energy footprint in real time?
➤ What’s the difference between greenwashing and greenhushing?
➤ Why are small language models (SLMs) key to efficiency?
➤ Can AI itself help solve the climate crisis — or is that wishful thinking?
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/034vux8EWzb9M5Gn6QDMza
🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-lyceum/id1837737167
🎧 Listen on Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/5a67f821-89f8-4b95-b873-2933ab977cd3/the-ai-lyceum
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The.AI.Lyceum
🌐 Learn more: https://theailyceum.com
Hosted by Samraj Matharu — Certified AI Ethicist (Oxford) | Visiting Lecturer (Durham) 400+ members from OpenAI, DeepMind, Oxford, Google, and more.
#AI #SustainableAI #GreenIT #GreenOps #EthicalAI #ClimateTech #AIWatch #ElectricityMaps #SmallLanguageModels #HuggingFace #DataCenters #ResponsibleAI #MachineLearning #AIResearch #AITransparency #EnergyEfficiency #GreenComputing #FutureOfAI #TheAILyceum #Podcast
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By Samraj Matharu“Sustainable AI means using AI without destroying the planet.” – Pascal Joly
What if the next great challenge for AI isn’t bias or privacy — but energy?
In this episode of The AI Lyceum™, Samraj Matharu speaks with Pascal Joly, a Silicon Valley product leader turned sustainability advocate, to unpack the true cost of intelligence: the carbon, water, and energy footprint behind AI.
Pascal combines decades in cloud and DevOps with environmental science, helping organisations cut emissions and build greener systems — including AI Wattch, an open-source tool he built to track LLM emissions in real time with Antarctica, a climate-tech firm. Together, they explore how to balance innovation with planetary limits — and why sustainability may be AI’s defining test.
From the greenwashing vs. greenhushing debate to tools like Electricity Maps, AI Wattch, and the AI Energy Score by Hugging Face.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
0:00 ➤ Introducing Pascal
3:15 ➤ What “Sustainable AI” Really Means
7:00 ➤ How AI Creates CO₂ and Water Impact
10:40 ➤ The Data Centre Energy Race
14:10 ➤ Green IT vs. GreenOps Explained
17:00 ➤ What Consumers Can Actually Do
18:30 ➤ Tools: Electricity Maps, AI Watch, CodeCarbon, AI Energy Score
22:45 ➤ Using AI for Sustainability (Climate Tech Examples)
26:00 ➤ Training vs. Inference – The True Energy Split
30:10 ➤ Making AI Development Sustainable
37:00 ➤ Greenwashing, Greenhushing & Corporate Truths
43:00 ➤ Recycling Heat and Water in Data Centres
45:30 ➤ Small Language Models & Embedded AI
49:00 ➤ The “Swiss Army Knife vs. Chef’s Knife” Analogy
52:00 ➤ Why Pascal Is Cautiously Optimistic
54:00 ➤ Audience Question: How Concerned Are You About AI’s Footprint?
KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED
➤ What does “sustainable AI” really mean in practice?
➤ How do AI models create carbon and water emissions?
➤ Which tools can measure AI’s energy footprint in real time?
➤ What’s the difference between greenwashing and greenhushing?
➤ Why are small language models (SLMs) key to efficiency?
➤ Can AI itself help solve the climate crisis — or is that wishful thinking?
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/034vux8EWzb9M5Gn6QDMza
🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-lyceum/id1837737167
🎧 Listen on Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/5a67f821-89f8-4b95-b873-2933ab977cd3/the-ai-lyceum
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The.AI.Lyceum
🌐 Learn more: https://theailyceum.com
Hosted by Samraj Matharu — Certified AI Ethicist (Oxford) | Visiting Lecturer (Durham) 400+ members from OpenAI, DeepMind, Oxford, Google, and more.
#AI #SustainableAI #GreenIT #GreenOps #EthicalAI #ClimateTech #AIWatch #ElectricityMaps #SmallLanguageModels #HuggingFace #DataCenters #ResponsibleAI #MachineLearning #AIResearch #AITransparency #EnergyEfficiency #GreenComputing #FutureOfAI #TheAILyceum #Podcast