Photo © European Union 2019 - Source : EP - Photo credit: Fred Marvaux
Policy corner
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
Let’s see how this policy will be implemented
generation of servers is reducing electricity
in practice. The future ‘Digital Europe’
bills in a wide range of datacentre applications.
programme, which focuses on digital capacity and infrastructure, will complement the
The problem is that these improvements are
‘Horizon Europe’ research and innovation
simply not enough. We need a lot of computing
programme. Through this programme, the Euro
power, and a lot of artificial intelligence (AI),
pean Union and the Member States will jointly
to address the challenges of sustainability,
invest in the widespread deployment of digital
climate change and the circular economy. But
technologies across society. In the orientation
this is a problem: some estimates suggest that
paper for Digital Europe is a section named
training an AI application generates as much
‘Making ICT products and services sustainable,
CO2 as five cars over their entire lifetime. For
by prioritising their energy efficiency’. Simply
the future, we need powerful AI that can be
put, this means that the European Commission
trained without warming the environment like
is planning specific investments in this area
a pizza oven. Because – if you think about it
over the next few years.
– even now the number of AI applications that
“For the future, we need powerful AI that can be trained without warming the environment like a pizza oven”
you use every day is much bigger than the OK, but what’s new? After all, for many years
number of pizzas that you could possibly eat.
the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme has supported the development of
This is a very difficult problem, which probably
computing technologies which are more
requires a new generation of hardware beyond
energy efficient. Thanks to research funded by
the current semiconductor technologies, and a
the European Union, the power budget of the
new generation of software to run the
control electronics for self-driving vehicles
hardware. I honestly don’t know if we will be
has gone down from the kilowatt range to
able to find a solution but I hope so, because I
much more manageable numbers, and a new
also have children.
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