Technology at the service of sustainable development ?

I was invited to talk about green coding practices in the television programme named “Technominds”, broadcast by the Boukè Média channel. The complete television programme (in french) is available below, if you are interested. Here is a summary of what I discussed.

There has been a lot of talk about AI lately, but we often forget that it is only the visible part of a much larger system. Training a model involves producing a gigantic file from a mass of data, mobilising servers, storage and processors that run for long periods of time. Once trained, even its daily use is not neutral: the larger the model, the more energy it consumes to respond.

Behind AI, there is also the cloud. We use it without thinking about it, because it frees us from our local limitations. Storage, computing, services: everythin is outsourced to very heavy physical infrastructures, but their impact remains hiddend behind the abstraction of “everythin online”.

And furthuer still, there are the developers. Each application relies on thousands of lines of code, trials, automated tests, tools, videos, research and services, which also place demands on the global digital infrastructure.

AI is impressive, but it is only one tree. To understand the real impact of digital technology, we need to look at the forest as a whole.