Latest / C-Suite Perspectives / How AI Is Reshaping Corporate Sustainability
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature series by The Conference Board.
- 0:04I'm Steve Odland from The Conference Board and the host of this podcast
- 0:07series, and in today's conversation, we're going to talk about AI and
- 0:12environmental sustainability.
- 0:14What are the risks?
- 0:14What are the opportunities, and what comes next?
- 0:17Joining me today is Dr. Andrew Jones, principal researcher
- 0:21at The Conference Board's Governance & Sustainability Center.
- 0:24Andrew, welcome, as always.
- 0:26Thanks so much for having me, Steve.
- 0:27A pleasure to be back once again.
- 0:29Yeah, so you just released this new report just a couple weeks ago on
- 0:33AI and the environment, and you did a great job of kind of outlining,
- 0:39I guess, two different lenses here.
- 0:40One lens dealing with the issue of how to make AI sustainable, and then the other
- 0:50issue of AI used for sustainability.
- 0:53Let's just talk through each one of these, Andrew.
- 0:56Let's start with sustainable AI.
- 0:58Give us an overview of what you learned in your study.
- 1:02Yeah, sure.
- 1:03Thanks, Steve.
- 1:03And it's, yeah, it's a pleasure to be here and share more on this work.
- 1:06Obviously, this has become such a timely issue, I think as AI has scaled, and
- 1:11I think more stakeholders and more people in general are paying attention
- 1:15to the environmental aspects of AI.
- 1:17And as you just hinted at, there's multiple dimensions here, right?
- 1:20Yeah, in our work, in our research, in our programs, and in our recent
- 1:23report, we effectively break AI's environmental dimensions down
- 1:27into these two lenses, right?
- 1:28The first, as you said, is sustainable AI, managing and mitigating
- 1:31AI's environmental footprint.
- 1:32And the second, which I perhaps we'll come on to discuss later, is how
- 1:35we can even use AI technology for positive environmental outcomes?
- 1:38So I think in terms of the first lens, if you will, sustainable
- 1:41AI, how do we understand and then, in turn, perhaps, manage and even
- 1:45mitigate AI's environmental footprint?
- 1:47I think this is a really fascinating area.
- 1:48And I think we've more and more realizing that AI and the development, the
- 1:52training, the running of AI models at scale can have quite big environmental
- 1:57costs and environmental impacts.
- 1:58Particularly, I think, around electricity consumption and water consumption.
- 2:02And I think we can break down more what these mean in practice.
- 2:05But I think the issue of electricity and energy is perhaps particularly interesting
- 2:09as we're seeing data centers proliferate and scale at ever-accelerating rates.
- 2:13So we did a lot of work, Steve, breaking down these different aspects and what
- 2:17they actually mean in practice and what we might expect to see coming on the agenda
- 2:20in a few years, and how that translates into C-suite and boardroom concerns.
- 2:25And there are multiple aspects to AI's impact on the environment, essentially.
- 2:30You've got, as you mentioned, a significant energy uptake.
- 2:33There's also water, but then there are the emissions impacts.
- 2:37Let's just take them one at a time.
- 2:39They're building these data centers.
- 2:40Well, we've had data centers for a long time.
- 2:42The issue is on this one that these data centers, used strictly
- 2:49for AI, consume multiples of the amounts of electricity than data
- 2:54centers used for normal functions.
- 2:55Talk about that.
- 2:57Yeah, sure.
- 2:57And it's worth saying, Steve, in our work, we did a survey of
- 3:00corporate sustainability leaders.
- 3:02And we asked them what aspect of AI's footprint concerned them the most.
- 3:06And there was a lot of options, and very few of them weren't concerned
- 3:09by something, but the top responses were pretty much data center, energy
- 3:13demand and consumption, and the greenhouse gas emissions that can
- 3:16potentially result from that energy.
- 3:18So I think data centers are top of mind for a lot of people.
- 3:20And as you highlighted, data centers have been around for a long time,
- 3:23data centers really have been the backbone of cloud computing that
- 3:26we've seen in the last few years.
- 3:28But there's something different I think about the AI models.
- 3:30And I think we all know that AI models, particularly when it's large
- 3:34language models, general purpose, generative AI models, they're very
- 3:37energy-intensive to train and run.
- 3:39Training an AI model, particularly some of the more recent massive frontier models,
- 3:44it consumes a vast amount of energy.
- 3:46It really is brute force.
- 3:47It can involve weeks or even months of nonstop computation, specialized chips
- 3:52running in parallel around the clock, constantly calculating and recalculating.
- 3:56And this, just in turn, obviously, it's very power-hungry.
- 3:59It burns a lot of power, and that's the training of the model.
- 4:02And then also then, the term we use is inference, when the model
- 4:05is actually used by people, that in turn can also have a big energy cost.
- 4:09A query for an AI model might be very small, in terms of the energy it uses, but
- 4:14when you have millions or, even billions of users making requests, that triggers,
- 4:18in turn, trillions of calculations inside a model that must happen instantly.
- 4:22So AI is running on these very specialized chips, designed for speed.
- 4:26They're drawing much more electricity than standard CPUs.
- 4:29And that high performance and high demand means high electrical load.
- 4:32And as AI models are getting larger and more scale, we're
- 4:35just seeing exponentially higher energy use, and it's requiring,
- 4:38in turn, a lot more data centers.
- 4:40And we're seeing a lot of capital expenditure by companies
- 4:42on data centers right now.
- 4:43They're popping up around the clock, really, as the AI infrastructure
- 4:46gets built for the next era.
- 4:48Well, the big AI folks are Google and Microsoft.
- 4:53Some of these companies are actually contracting with energy companies
- 4:58to dedicate whole nuclear power plants to running their data centers,
- 5:03speaking to what you're saying.
- 5:05And so, if you put in a normal search, it's just a tiny little bit of data, and
- 5:10also a tiny little bit of energy usage.
- 5:12But when you put in an AI search, what you have is that search scrubbing
- 5:19all, doing all these searches at the same time and then forming an answer.
- 5:23So what used to be just a little tiny bit of energy used on a search now
- 5:29has been converted to an AI search, and I think a lot of people just do
- 5:32it because it's a nice answer and you don't have to go through websites.
- 5:36But the amount, the multiples of energy being used is, for what used
- 5:41to be just a little search, is huge.
- 5:43And I think what you've just described, I guess it's, part of
- 5:45the transformation that is about to come and we're starting to see in
- 5:48AI, AI's transformation of business, but also just everyday life, right?
- 5:52As more consumers use it to find products or more people use it to find the things
- 5:57that they used to find through other ways.
- 5:59It's a birth of a new era.
- 6:00Behind that, there is this huge appetite for, almost an insatiable
- 6:04appetite for, power and energy and electricity to drive it.
- 6:07And yet, it's worth saying, Steve, this landscape does change quickly, right?
- 6:10We're constantly seeing new chips and new technologies emerge that maybe
- 6:14may be more efficient, may reduce the cost, may reduce the energy costs,
- 6:17but even by increasing efficiency, it simply, still leads to more electricity
- 6:23demand, and more efficiency enables larger models and more workloads, right?
- 6:26So I think this trend is here to stay.
- 6:28And we are going to see over the next, just the next few years, just
- 6:31in the US, we're going to see a lot more data centers, a lot of
- 6:34capital expenditure in this area.
- 6:35And if these data centers are running on fossil fuel, heavy energy grids,
- 6:40as they often are, that higher consumption is going to translate
- 6:44into greenhouse gas emissions, which as we know can drive warming.
- 6:47So there is a strong environmental aspect to all of this that I think is
- 6:51becoming more and more harder to ignore.
- 6:53Well, there's also the heat generated by the data centers,
- 6:57and that has to be cooled.
- 6:58It's a spiral of things that goes beyond.
- 7:01And so, on one hand, they're adding a lot of capital to add
- 7:05the infrastructure to do that.
- 7:06And we have not expanded the electricity production capacity in this
- 7:10country for, I don't know, decades.
- 7:12Mostly because the incremental usage required was offset by the
- 7:17savings through conservation.
- 7:21The, the move to smart appliances, LED bulbs, and all that, but that has now
- 7:26hit the wall, particularly with AI, and you're seeing this massive upsurge in it.
- 7:33And so there's carbon aspects to that, as you said.
- 7:35But then you also mentioned in the report the use of water.
- 7:39What does water have to do with it?
- 7:41So you saw that water is a major part.
- 7:43It's interesting, because I think the electricity side of things, the energy
- 7:47side of things, and the emissions that follow has been probably the
- 7:49main environmental issue, I think, that's captured attention when
- 7:53it comes to AI and data centers.
- 7:54But water consumption also seems to be moving up the agenda.
- 7:57I think we're starting to see a bit more attention on this.
- 7:59As you highlighted, Steve, yeah, at big data centers, big AI-centric data
- 8:02centers, water is used for cooling.
- 8:04These chips are running very hot, and circulating water through is one way
- 8:08to keep them at the right temperature.
- 8:10The water that absorbs that heat is then transferred somewhere
- 8:12else, and some of it evaporates.
- 8:13And because salty water can corrode machinery, companies and data
- 8:17centers are using potable water directly from municipal supplies.
- 8:20So it requires a lot of water, to put it bluntly.
- 8:23And as data centers scale, more water is required.
- 8:26I do think, we say this in a report, we do need to keep this in perspective.
- 8:28AI today actually only represents a very small share of total industrial water use.
- 8:33Some studies, quite a few studies, like to point out that, for example, the amount
- 8:36of water used to cool AI data centers is significantly lower than irrigating
- 8:41golf courses or agriculture or so on.
- 8:43So we should keep it in perspective, but water consumption is rising
- 8:47as models become more complex and we build more data centers.
- 8:50And it's a tricky and more complex issue, I think, because it's a
- 8:53more local issue than perhaps emissions and electricity, right?
- 8:58As data centers are often concentrated in very specific states and even within
- 9:03very specific regions within those states.
- 9:05And if they happen to be in locations that already have existing water stress or
- 9:09existing water challenges, these increased water demands can be a big problem.
- 9:13Water is municipal and community level, and often therefore, water withdrawals for
- 9:17data centers can have big local impacts.
- 9:20And we're starting to see those emerge, I think.
- 9:22And we're starting to see debates emerge around this.
- 9:24It's a very complex issue.
- 9:25And I think another one that's here to stay.
- 9:28Now I think this is moving up the strategic agenda, for sure.
- 9:30Yeah.
- 9:31And putting them in municipal areas, fight with water needs for
- 9:34people and homes and all of that.
- 9:36So the natural inclination is to say, well, just put them in rural areas.
- 9:40However, that makes them compete with agricultural needs, which feeds the
- 9:44country and secures national security.
- 9:47And so it's a challenge regardless of where you put them.
- 9:50But there's also this impact of the land use, and the spillover of that, too.
- 9:56And you go to some of these areas where these data centers pop up.
- 9:59I mean, these are not pretty buildings.
- 10:01There are no windows.
- 10:02They are just massive concrete bunkers, and they're using
- 10:06acreage like you wouldn't believe.
- 10:08That's a big impact.
- 10:09It really is.
- 10:10And I think is, perhaps, in our researching some of the land-use impacts
- 10:14of AI perhaps are right now less of a concern for some of our sustainability
- 10:17audience than the emissions or the water.
- 10:20But I think rising up the agenda, and I think you're so right,
- 10:21Steve, as we're seeing data centers get built out at scale.
- 10:25And they require a lot of materials, and sometimes they can be very
- 10:28carbon-intensive materials.
- 10:29And they contribute to these local issues in all kinds of ways.
- 10:32The rapid buildout, particularly, as you said, perhaps in rural areas or
- 10:35semi-rural areas have triggered a lot of zoning debates, and have triggered
- 10:38a lot of community, in some places, at least, some community pushback.
- 10:42So I think this is something that the companies, and perhaps primarily
- 10:45applies to the tech firms and the data center builders, but I think it
- 10:49also applies to a lot of companies that are indirectly dependent on them.
- 10:51It is something that has to be considered, and it is a risk, I
- 10:54think, and a rising issue, for sure.
- 10:57Well, there's sound issues, too.
- 10:58A lot of these data centers emit high-pitched noises from
- 11:02cooling fans and so forth.
- 11:04So if you live near a data center, it's not dissimilar to windmills that have
- 11:09bad bearings, but you're constantly dealing with this, it's either this
- 11:13low hum or shrieking over time.
- 11:15So, that's another whole thing with the local impact, as well.
- 11:19There's also, as you pointed out in the report, e-waste and hardware turnover.
- 11:22Talk about that.
- 11:24Again, this perhaps might be one of those areas that's less recognized
- 11:27in the broader discussions around AI.
- 11:28But for sure, I mean, think AI, as you said, AI-centric data centers
- 11:33are a little different, right?
- 11:34In terms of the chips they use, the way they run, the way they operate, and
- 11:37often they have quite an accelerated hardware refresh cycle, right?
- 11:40So sometimes as short as sort of 18 months, 24 months, AI needs
- 11:44to be turned over, and chips need to be turned over and refreshed.
- 11:46It can create big volumes of electronic waste.
- 11:49And not that many facilities, really in the US or globally, are
- 11:53equipped to recover these sort of materials from high-density chips
- 11:56and advanced memory at scale.
- 11:58So I think e-waste, while right now it maybe isn't top-of-mind issue for
- 12:02many people when it comes to AI's environmental impact, I think it
- 12:04will rise, and it will become more of a sort of responsibility gap.
- 12:08And I think there'll be more issue on recycling, and how do
- 12:10we extend hardware life strategies?
- 12:13How do we build resale markets and clearer end-of-life accountability?
- 12:16I think all these issues are going to continue to rise and,
- 12:19particularly, as we see the tech become quite obsolete quite quickly.
- 12:24Yeah, all of that's a big concern.
- 12:27You can't pick up a newspaper without reading about rare earth minerals.
- 12:30And we have national security concerns with rare earth minerals.
- 12:34We need them for the chips themselves.
- 12:36We also need them for the batteries that go into all of this.
- 12:38But that's another stress point on the environment because you either have to
- 12:43mine them here, or you're mining them somewhere on Earth, which releases carbon.
- 12:46And of course, all of the runoff and transportation issues with that.
- 12:51So lots of rare earth issues, too.
- 12:54That is so right.
- 12:55AI hardware, right, it really does depend on a quite a narrow
- 12:58set of critical minerals.
- 13:00I know my colleagues at The Conference Board in the ESF Center have done some
- 13:03fantastic work on critical minerals, often can be very environmentally
- 13:06harmful to extract, can be concentrated in certain regions, can even be quite
- 13:10geopolitically sensitive, right?
- 13:11So I think this reliance creates a lot of potential risks.
- 13:15And I think unlike electricity or water, these constraints are
- 13:18maybe not immediately that visible.
- 13:19They might not be halting projects or surfacing through community debates but
- 13:25could represent, perhaps, a long-term environmental issue, a long-term scaling
- 13:28issue, a long-term resilience issue, so the critical minerals aspect to
- 13:32this is a really fascinating story.
- 13:34And also, yeah, a potentially big environmental impact, as well.
- 13:38Talking about the use of AI and the environmental
- 13:41sustainability issues around that.
- 13:43We're going to take a short break and be right back.
- 13:47Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
- 13:50I'm your host, Steve Odland, from The Conference Board, and I'm joined
- 13:52by Dr. Andrew Jones, principal researcher at The Conference Board's
- 13:56Governance & Sustainability Center.
- 13:58So, Andrew, before the break, we were talking about all of the
- 14:02environmental or sustainability issues around the expansion of AI.
- 14:06One of those you mentioned was the local areas where you see
- 14:10the intensity of data centers.
- 14:13For some reason, in Virginia seems to be the epicenter of that.
- 14:16Also Texas, California, and to a lesser extent, Illinois.
- 14:20Why Virginia, of all places, or Texas, of all places, for the
- 14:24concentration of these data centers?
- 14:26You're so right, Steve.
- 14:27It's so interesting.
- 14:28And at our latest count, we think there's about 4,000 data
- 14:32centers across the entire US.
- 14:33And about a third of these are in just three of the states you mentioned:
- 14:37Virginia, Texas, and California.
- 14:39Virginia alone accounts for about 15% of all data centers in the US, which
- 14:43is a very remarkable concentration.
- 14:45And a lot of them are actually within a specific area of Virginia, northern
- 14:49Virginia, Loudon County, which is also known as "Data Center Alley."
- 14:52So I think the way we have to understand this, Steve, is
- 14:54it's not coincidental, right?
- 14:56That data centers often are cited in strategic locations where they
- 15:00can get good connectivity, reliable power, available land, proximity
- 15:05to major demand, right climate and right environmental conditions.
- 15:08And Virginia and Northern Virginia, I think, has emerged as a real global hub.
- 15:12It's the largest data center in the market and the world, represents a
- 15:15meaningful share of global capacity.
- 15:17But we're also seeing concentrations elsewhere.
- 15:19Dallas Fort Worth in Texas has grown rapidly.
- 15:21And, of course, Silicon Valley in California.
- 15:23I think there's reasons why this is, and obviously there's a lot
- 15:26of positives to this, right?
- 15:26They're in these regions creating huge amount of economic opportunity, tax
- 15:30revenue new markets, and new customers.
- 15:32But I think, from an environmental perspective, can also have obvious
- 15:36significant impacts when you've got so many data centers in a specific place.
- 15:40And the obvious one is straining local energy grids.
- 15:43Yeah.
- 15:43I've driven around Ashburn, Virginia, which is in Loudoun County, as you said.
- 15:48They are everywhere.
- 15:49And it's just really kind of eerie when you drive down a road and you see
- 15:53data center after data center, and you can tell the difference between data
- 15:56centers and any other kind of commercial building, cause there are no ports for
- 16:01trucks, as you see with distribution centers, there's not a lot of activity.
- 16:05It's all buttoned up and automated and high security, and there's
- 16:08noise, as we said before.
- 16:10Right, and it's, as you said, Steve, not a huge amount of people.
- 16:13They don't tend to require massive workforces, they are highly automated.
- 16:17It's more sort of a specialized, job.
- 16:18But yeah, they are in these particular reasons, huge concentrations, and that
- 16:23in practice, that means certain utility territories are facing big sort of load
- 16:28demands, big reliability concerns when it comes to providing reliable electricity.
- 16:33And as you know, this can have strong local and even political effects, right?
- 16:37It feeds into debates around energy prices and energy affordability and
- 16:41energy access and energy security.
- 16:43So, there's a lot of consequences and a lot of implications to
- 16:46this sort of rapid, almost even exponential, build out of data centers.
- 16:51Well, and we don't talk about it, there are national security concerns,
- 16:53too, because the more we're reliant on those data centers, and the more
- 16:56they're sitting in one place, has a big target on it for the country's enemies.
- 17:01And Ashburn, Virginia, is about a stone's throw from Washington, DC,
- 17:04and the defense suppliers are one of the big users of these data centers.
- 17:08It also makes it a target.
- 17:10We've been talking about the impact of AI on the environment,
- 17:14let's go the other way.
- 17:15Let's talk about all the positive things that AI can do for sustainability.
- 17:20Yeah, happy to, Steve.
- 17:21I think, as we started out this podcast, we noted our work separates
- 17:25out into these two lenses, looking at sustainable AI and AI for sustainability.
- 17:29And we even go so far as to argue you have to look at these lenses together.
- 17:32You can't just focus on the cost, the environmental costs and tradeoffs of
- 17:36AI without also acknowledging that AI itself, and the technology and
- 17:39the tools, can play a big role in actually addressing environmental
- 17:43challenges, being applied for positive environmental and sustainable outcomes.
- 17:47I think normally AI, when you look at the underlying tech and what
- 17:49it really does, is well-suited to environmental challenges, right?
- 17:52Because many environmental problems are, they're data heavy, they're complex,
- 17:56they're dynamic, they're interconnected.
- 17:58And AI often excels at detecting subtle patterns in messy data, which
- 18:03makes it perfect for some of the big sustainability challenges of the day.
- 18:07So I think AI has a lot of potential here, and I think corporate sustainability
- 18:12leaders, while it's still perhaps relatively early days, this is still a
- 18:15new technology, are starting to integrate AI more into their work and apply it.
- 18:20Some of those big challenges we actually found in our survey that more
- 18:23than 60% of corporate sustainability leaders are already using AI for
- 18:27something environmental-related.
- 18:29It's worth saying that these are perhaps still early, nascent use cases,
- 18:32that they're tending to apply them for perhaps the most obvious uses,
- 18:35like reporting, automating reporting, automating data analysis, writing
- 18:39reports, disclosure, carbon accounting.
- 18:42And these are natural early applications, where you've got fragmented
- 18:45data sets, repetitive workflows.
- 18:47AI's great for bringing the efficiency gains, but we've heard from our
- 18:51sustainability audience, and we note this in our work, that perhaps
- 18:55the more advanced applications are yet to come, where it comes to more
- 18:58sophisticated operations and climate risk analysis in all these areas.
- 19:02I'm happy to dive into those a little bit further.
- 19:04Interesting, you said that 60%, I think 61% of companies tell us
- 19:09that they're using AI for some sort of sustainability reasons.
- 19:14But 40% are not.
- 19:17That's a pretty high number.
- 19:18I mean, I know it's more than half are using it, but gosh, you would
- 19:21think that, what is this, five years into the adoption of AI, that it
- 19:25would be nearly a hundred percent.
- 19:27Is that just because the use of AI is mostly analytical, and people
- 19:31have their own tools and the frameworks, and it's just inertia?
- 19:35I think it's a really great observation.
- 19:37I think you're right that you might've expected that number to be higher
- 19:40given, how mainstreamed AI has been and how both the urgency of the focus
- 19:45across the entire private sector.
- 19:47I think what it reflects is not an inertia or a lack of commitment on the part of
- 19:51our sustainability audiences, but I think just more a case of still building up
- 19:55that kind of that internal literacy, that internal fluency, that really identifying,
- 20:00OK, where are the real use cases here?
- 20:02Where are the real returns going to be?
- 20:04How do we perhaps integrate AI into what are already quite complex
- 20:09processes and also quite fragmented and perhaps opaque data sets?
- 20:14I think there's also a sort of a laying the groundwork for effective
- 20:16use of AI, but I think it is building and I think if we ran that survey
- 20:20again at the end of this year, I'm sure that 60% would be a lot higher.
- 20:24And I think the momentum is there, and we see that both in sustainability and
- 20:28some of the related functions, as well, like social impact and philanthropy.
- 20:32So I think it shows that the adoption of AI does require some work, right?
- 20:35It's not always easy.
- 20:36It's not always straightforward.
- 20:37There is some sort of integrative tissue and fabric that needs building,
- 20:40but it is happening, for sure.
- 20:42And I think it will continue to mature as a discipline within sustainability.
- 20:46So the biggest use that's in these reporting and analytical
- 20:50functions, you've said that, but there's also use in operations.
- 20:54Talk about that, for energy efficiency, waste and water management, all of that.
- 21:00A hundred percent.
- 21:01And we think and we hear from our members that the potentially
- 21:04highest-value sustainability and environmental use cases are here.
- 21:08That they sit beyond reporting and disclosure.
- 21:10They sit in really how we can really transform operations and logistics and
- 21:14supply chains and, for example, to use energy efficiency and grid optimization.
- 21:18We know that targeted and effective use of AI through an analysis of
- 21:23data and looking at for efficiencies can really cut energy use, whether
- 21:26it's in buildings and industrial sites, even within data centers.
- 21:29And we've heard stories of AI systems actually reducing the power usage and
- 21:34cooling usage within data centers as they're applied to those data sets.
- 21:38And I think can also in the same vein be used to forecast energy use and
- 21:43improve the mix and improve efficiency.
- 21:45So there's so much potential there to be integrated much
- 21:48deeper into corporate operations.
- 21:51And obviously that goes beyond just the sustainability team.
- 21:53The sustainability team has a key role to play there, but it's really the entire
- 21:56business and the entire sort of the business units and operations, supply
- 22:00chains, logistics, et cetera, that all have an important role to play in bringing
- 22:04in AI in an effective and measurable way.
- 22:08And you could add a lot more examples to that, I think of what AI can do for
- 22:11optimizing, or for logistics, routes, network op systems, supply chains,
- 22:16materials, innovation, recycling.
- 22:18There's so much here that AI can be applied for.
- 22:21And it's never easy.
- 22:22There's always bottlenecks.
- 22:23There's always challenges.
- 22:23But I think in the years to come, we'll start to see companies realize some quite
- 22:28measurable and tangible environmental gains from the application of AI.
- 22:33In our latest C-Suite Outlook survey, one of the key issues for CEOs and
- 22:38CFOs in the application of AI was demonstrating some sort of ROI.
- 22:43It's gone from, it's a typical kind of startup where few years ago, nobody could
- 22:47spell AI, and then it was rapid adoption.
- 22:50And then last year in the survey, CEOs were most concerned about falling behind,
- 22:54and so it was like, let's invest like crazy so that we don't fall behind.
- 22:58This year they're looking for ROI.
- 23:00And that showed up in your survey here as it relates to the use of AI
- 23:05for sustainability tools, because there were not clear returns on
- 23:11the deployment of those tools.
- 23:13That's right.
- 23:13And I think the same, you're so right that I think we're seeing now, across
- 23:17the board, the issue of ROI is emerging as this central AI question, isn't it?
- 23:22And yeah, how do we, we've all adopted AI to some extent.
- 23:25How do we now integrate into our core processes, our core business in a way that
- 23:30can also be measured and show tangible returns and justify that investment?
- 23:33I think it's the same thing for the corporate sustainability function.
- 23:36It's interesting cause there are a lot of examples out there of very
- 23:40tangible and measured improvements in sustainability through the use of AI that
- 23:44also translate into business returns.
- 23:45I'm thinking, for example, when companies have applied AI to their
- 23:49logistics and have optimized the routes of their fleets and reduced mileage,
- 23:53reduced fuel use, reduced emissions.
- 23:55That has a big return to the business, as well, in terms of costs and saved costs
- 24:00and more efficient ways of operating.
- 24:01So there's a strong ROI element to this, too, right?
- 24:04I think if AI can be leveraged by companies to advance sustainable
- 24:09and environmental goals, it's also going to contribute towards showing
- 24:12that broader business case, right?
- 24:14As we see efficiencies improve and consumption of fuel and
- 24:18materials reduce, I think that will play an important part in that.
- 24:21I think sustainability leaders, there's an opportunity here for them to be at the
- 24:25table and be part of these discussions and really make their voice heard.
- 24:29Any final thoughts or insights you'd like to share from your report?
- 24:33As always, Steve, we've had a wide-ranging and a comprehensive discussion.
- 24:37I'd just add that we've also done a lot of work in The Conference Board's Governance
- 24:41& Sustainability Center on AI oversight and AI governance and responsible AI.
- 24:46And one of the findings in our work, which perhaps isn't surprising given some
- 24:49of the things we spoke about, is the environmental issues have often been much
- 24:52lower in those discussions than perhaps some other big risk areas of AI, right?
- 24:56Like bias and transparency and privacy and security and safety.
- 25:00Makes a lot of sense given those are the areas where
- 25:02regulators perhaps have of focus.
- 25:04But I think as AI adoption accelerates, and some of the things we've been speaking
- 25:08about today become more apparent, I think we'll see perhaps environmental
- 25:11issues move up that agenda, as well.
- 25:13So I think this isn't just a sustainability story.
- 25:15This is a governance and oversight story, as well.
- 25:18So definitely a space we'll be watching and monitoring
- 25:20closely at The Conference Board.
- 25:22All right, we'll be watching it, too.
- 25:24And Andrew, they can find your report where?
- 25:27I'd encourage anyone listening to visit the TCB website, tcb.org, and visit
- 25:31the Governance & Sustainability Center.
- 25:33You'll find our report there.
- 25:35Publicly available.
- 25:36It's worth the read, and lots of good data in there.
- 25:40Dr. Andrew Jones, thanks for being with us today and sharing
- 25:42the insights on your report.
- 25:44Thanks so much for having me, Steve.
- 25:45Always, always a pleasure to join you.
- 25:47And thanks to all of you for listening to C-Suite Perspectives.
- 25:50I'm Steve Odland, and this series has been brought to you by The Conference Board.