Duke Professor Tiedrich (’88) on the Environmental Footprint of AI, at COP27

AI systems hold the promise to help advance sustainability goals but policies and practices relating to implementing and measuring the significant computational resources to power them must be appropriately managed to maximize their net benefit to the environment and society. November 15th, Duke Law School and Initiative for Science & Society professor Lee Tiedrich (’88Eng.) will present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Pavilion on the environmental promise and environmental costs of AI in the coming century.

Co-chair of the Responsible AI Strategy for the Environment (RAISE) committee at the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), Tiedrich will be joined for the panel with experts from the OECD.AI Expert Group on AI Compute and Climate and others to launch and discuss the applications of their report “The AI footprint: measuring the environmental impacts of AI compute and applications.”

Their report examines existing measurement tools and key challenges for quantifying the positive and negative environmental impacts of training and deploying AI models and their applications. By creating and tracking AI-specific measures of compute, sharing best practices, and supporting new and innovative AI applications for fighting climate change, countries can help ensure that AI is trained and deployed in the most sustainable way possible, while minimizing negative impacts, for the good of the planet.

Lee Tiedrich’s Work at Duke

A Duke ’88 alumna with a degree in electrical engineering and over 30 years of legal experience, Tiedrich has had a long career bridging technology, law, and policy. As a partner at the global law firm Covington & Burling LLP, she served as co-chair of the firm’s global and multi-disciplinary AI Initiative and counseled organizations on a broad range of data and technology matters, including policy, governance, intellectual property, transactions, regulatory, and digital transformation.

At Duke University, Tiedrich is the Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Ethical Technology with a dual appointment at Duke Law School and Duke Science & Society. Building upon her 30 years of practicing law at a leading global law firm and her electrical engineering studies, Professor Tiedrich focuses on developing practical solutions that help enable society to unlock the benefits of data, AI, and other emerging technologies in a trusted manner that also protects fundamental rights and our national security.

She currently teaches a Fall course in Artificial Intelligence Law and Policy, an upcoming new Spring course in Data Governance and Sharing, and the Ethical Technology practicum in both Fall and Spring semesters. In the Practicum, teams of graduate students from across Duke’s academic disciplines work on pressing real-world ethical tech projects with international, non-profit and corporate organizations.

Tiedrich also leads the Responsible Data and Emerging Technologies Program within Science & Society’s Ethical Tech program. In this work, Tiedrich drives interdisciplinary scholarship and thought leadership convenings with Duke faculty and external stakeholders for the development and analysis of best practices in data sharing, data governance, and the assessment of AI impacts.

 

Learn more about the report and register for the session