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With climate change, pollution, and similar concerns at the forefront of consumer consciousness, sustainability can benefit businesses in more ways than one. Indeed, a recent research study by IBM and the National Retail Foundation suggests that 70% of North Americans say it is "important" for a brand to be eco-friendly.
Today, when consumer perception of sustainability begins to impact company profitability, business leaders turn to artificial intelligence (AI) for "green" solutions. Below, we explore two of these applications.
All sorts of e-waste, from busted iPhones to automobiles, litter landfills around the world. In the future, AI could keep broken, redundant, or discarded electronics from adding to the pile by tracking product health. Naveen Joshi, CEO of Allerin, suggests that AI will soon allow companies to save money and the environment by helping to design more resilient, recyclable products.
"Major companies can use AI and IoT for environmental sustainability along with eco-friendly hardware to reduce the generation of e-waste. With proper techniques in place, the discarded devices can be refurbished and reused, saving millions of dollars for the enterprise in the manufacturing of new products."
"Using IoT and AI, businesses can develop systems to monitor their hardware. The system can detect and notify the consumer if the life cycle of a part is over or has turned faulty and guide the consumer through replacement procedures. An efficient IoT based AI-driven system can help decrease our carbon footprint."
In 2016, Google reduced its data center cooling bill by 40% using DeepMind AI. Tech entrepreneur and startup CEO Jim Gao, who led cooperation between DeepMind and Google, says,
"Reducing energy usage has been a major focus for [Google] over the past 10 years: we have built our own super-efficient servers...invented more efficient ways to cool our data centers and invested heavily in green energy sources, with the goal of being powered 100 percent by renewable energy. Compared to five years ago, we now get around 3.5 times the computing power out of the same amount of energy..."
The cost of doing business often includes a huge volume of greenhouse gases and non-renewable resources. Artificial intelligence allows businesses to lower this environmental toll by helping design and run alternatives.
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