View Posts By:
Richard Maltzman
Dave Shirley
Recent Posts
Saving the Sahel (Part 1)
You Can't Get They-ah From Hee-yah
Floating an idea into reality: the other side of the AI Project Paradox
The Environment of the Built Environment: an AI Paradox
Is plastic on your mind?
Categories
6th,
6th Edfition,
6th Edition PMBOK,
7th Edition,
7th Edition PMBOK,
8th Edition PMBOK,
8th Edition PMBOK Guide,
Activism,
actuarial,
actuary,
adapt,
addition by subtraction,
Africa,
africa,
agriculture,
airforce,
ajaita,
Alaska,
amazon,
analogous,
analytics,
ancient,
and more power,
antarctica,
anti-science,
apple,
apps,
architecture,
arctic,
arrakis,
Artificial Intelligence,
asch paradigm,
Assistant,
asthma,
astronomy,
automobile,
automotive,
autonomous cars,
b,
bankhar,
Banksy Crypto,
basalt,
baseball,
bats,
batter,
beauty products,
benefit,
benefits,
Benefits Realization,
beyond epica,
biases,
bicycle,
big data,
big dfata,
big dig,
bike,
biodiversity,
biomedicine,
birdhouse,
blockchain,
blood,
blue blood,
blue trees,
bluefin,
bluefin tuna,
book review,
boston,
boston university,
Boyce,
Brazil,
brazil,
Breakdown Structures,
BS,
building,
buildings,
built environment,
built environment,
bumblebee,
cake,
capacitor,
car,
Carbon,
carbon,
carbon capture,
carbon negative,
carbon neutral,
carbon pool,
carbon sequestration,
carbonate,
careers,
CEO,
ChatGPT,
chatGPT,
chatgpt,
chatgpt,
chess,
China,
china,
chopsticks,
citrus,
cli-fi,
climate,
climate change,
climate resilience,
climeworks,
Clumsy,
CO2,
co2,
CO2 Utilization,
coalition,
cobalt,
coffee pods,
cognition,
cognitive,
Collabortion,
colombia,
concrete,
Conflict,
construction 5.0,
cool projects xyloscope,
cooling,
coral,
corn,
cost of good quality,
cost of poor quality,
cost of quality,
crazy,
criticism of project management,
cryptocurrency,
CSR,
csr,
data,
data analytics,
data privacy,
datacenter,
dataset,
death spiral,
Decision Making,
decomposition,
Defense and Climate,
definition of a project,
deforestation,
dependencies,
dependency,
desert,
DIKW,
dikw,
dimopoulos,
disposal,
dna,
DOD,
dogs,
dolphins,
dream,
drilling,
drink,
dune,
dune,
dutch,
early start,
earth,
eatlocal,
eco-tourism,
ecological,
economic,
economics,
EKC,
electric grid,
electricity,
electronics,
elysis,
embodied carbon,
emerging technologies,
empower,
Energy,
energy efficiency,
environmental degradation,
escalate,
escalation,
ESG,
extreme weather,
fallacy,
FARC,
farming,
finance,
fish,
fish brains,
fishing,
fix,
fixing the earth,
flint water,
Flint Water Supply,
flood,
flooding,
Food supply chain,
food waste,
forest,
forest for the trees,
forestation,
forrestgump,
frank herbert,
Fruitcake,
fungus,
fusion,
Galvao,
garage,
gas,
gasoline,
geese,
gender equality,
gender partnerships,
generational differences,
Generative AI,
gladwell,
gold,
Goodness,
google,
Government,
GPT,
great pacific garbage patch,
green,
green building,
green buildings,
green energy,
green iguana,
green project,
green project management,
greening,
guest post,
gyre,
harkonnen,
Harvesting Benefits,
hawasina,
hedgehogs,
heursitics,
historical data,
hlb,
holitsic,
holland,
horseshoe crab,
human-caused climate change,
hydrogen,
hydrology,
ice,
iceland,
ignition,
iguana,
imagery,
impact,
india,
inequality,
information,
initiatives,
injection,
insurance,
intelligence,
interacting risk,
internal combustion engine,
invasive species,
investment,
isomer,
issue escalation,
issues,
ITER,
jobs,
Jupiter,
justification,
kids,
kill point,
knowledge,
koch brothers,
Kuznets,
laboratory,
LAL,
landscape mode,
lapampa,
launch,
LCA,
Leadership,
Leadership,
life cycle analyses,
life cycle analysis,
lifecycle,
Linkedin,
liquid,
lizard,
local,
long term,
long-term,
long-term thinking,
look up,
loud,
maintenance,
maker,
makermovement,
malcolm gladwell,
management,
marathon,
marine biology,
market,
mars,
Martin Luther King,
mean,
megawatt,
MeHg,
melting,
mercury,
metal,
Microgrid,
microplastics,
migration,
military,
millennial,
mindset,
minerals,
mission,
mitigate,
MLK,
mongolia,
museum,
museum of london,
nature,
nematodes,
net gain,
Net Project Success Score,
net zero,
netherlands,
network,
New book,
New Jersey,
New Practitioners,
new york,
NFT,
nitrogen,
noise,
noreaster,
norway,
nova,
NPSS,
NREL,
ocean,
ocean cleanup,
ocean life,
oil rig,
oil rigs,
oklahoma,
oman,
only murders in the building,
opportunity,
overall risk,
oxygen,
packaging,
pareto,
PBS,
permafrost,
persistence,
peru,
Pharmaceutical,
planet,
planet.com,
planning,
plant,
plasma,
plastic,
playground,
pm,
pm education,
pmbok,
pmbok guide,
pmnetwork,
PMXPO-2018,
podcast,
pollutants,
pollution,
poop,
poor,
portfolio,
power,
power skills,
privacy,
privacy concerns,
professors,
program,
Program Management,
project,
project leader,
project leadership,
project management,
project management 3.0,
project on fire,
project progress,
Project Success,
project success,
projecticity,
projectleadership,
projectmanagement,
projects,
psychology,
pulse of the profession,
purple bacteria,
purpose,
quiet,
rainforest,
rationale,
reef,
refugees,
renewable,
renewables,
Repair,
repair,
repeatable process,
repeatable processes,
repurpose,
research,
resource breakdown strucuture,
Resource Management,
reversing climate change,
revisionist history,
rich,
rigs2reefs,
ripe,
risk,
risk avoidance,
Risk Management,
risk mitigation,
risk response,
risk responses,
river,
robots,
rocks,
rules of thumb,
rural,
rural India,
russia,
Sarcasm/Irony,
satellite,
saudi,
schedule,
sci-fi,
Science,
science,
science-fiction,
scientific american,
screaming monkeys,
sea,
sea life,
Sea-Level Rise,
sea-level rise,
seagreens,
seawall,
seawater,
seawater temperature,
seaweed. beat;es. farming,
secondary risk,
selena gomez,
sequestration,
shipping,
skyscraper,
SLR,
smart cities,
smart city,
smelting,
social,
social pressure,
soil,
solar,
solar panels,
solar perovkites,
solar saheli,
sonic,
sponge cities,
SRI,
stage-gate,
stagegate,
stakeholder,
stakeholder management,
steward,
stewardship,
storage,
strategy,
stupid,
success,
suffer,
sulphur,
sunk cost,
supercapacitor,
supply chain,
survey,
Sustainability,
sustainability,
Sustainable Investing,
Sustainable Tourism,
sybiosis,
symbiosis,
system 03,
TBL,
temperature,
terraform,
terraforming,
test,
threat,
threats,
totem,
touchscreen,
tour,
tower,
Trains,
transparency,
transportation,
trash,
tree,
tree species,
trees,
trillion,
triple bottom line,
triple constraint,
truth to power,
UMass,
us army corps of engineers,
USDA,
vacuum,
value,
venus,
vision,
voice,
voltage optimization,
vw scandal,
washing machine,
waste,
wastewater,
water,
we mean business,
whales,
Whirlpool,
wind,
wisdom,
women,
Women in Project Management,
wood wide web,
woonerf,
Work Breakdown Structures (WBS),
world breakdown structure,
worms,
xian,
xylotron,
Yale
Date
In a previous post, I may have besmirched the name of AI. And since I don’t want the robots to come for me first in anger and revenge, I want to update that post.
In that post, https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/74012/ai-s-dirty-little---clean-little---secret , I talk about the carbon footprint of AI. I did (robots, take note!) talk about many helpful applications which may make that carbon investment worthwhile, saying, amongst other things, “Overall, generative AI systems have the potential to help solve the climate crisis by providing more accurate climate modeling, optimizing energy usage, facilitating the deployment and management of renewable energy resources, and improving the efficiency of carbon capture technology.”
But the main thing I (and others who were taking this angle) forgot to do in that first post was to subtract the carbon footprint of the humans working on the task that AI was doing either instead of, or along with, the human.
To that end, I discovered this article from Nature magazine, which says,
AI is poised to take over roles once thought to be solely the domain of humans—those requiring creativity and the ability to integrate across multiple intellectual domains to synthesize concepts from each. In this study, we have compared the impact of AI to the impact of humans performing two tasks—writing and illustration—to highlight the role that AI is positioned to take in society, as AI transitions from digital tools of limited utility to more complex instruments with high generative capacity. We found that, for these two activities, at least, AI has a substantially lower carbon footprint than humans engaged in the same task. This study provides new insights on the relative environmental footprint of AI and humans, and it highlights the importance of considering the impact of AI relative to a human when evaluating its overall impact on the environment.
In their example on creating an image, the researchers created a carbon footprint bar chart (see below) which shows that a human creating one image is greater than a DALL-E or Midjourney image creation by a huge factor.
I suggest having a look at the article as it also provides good advice for project manager who are looking at change management plans. Always remember to include the baseline, and to take into account not just what the change brings (in terms of positives and negatives) but also the broader impact that a change brings, thinking holistically.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: September 23, 2024 04:34 PM |
Permalink
Community Champion
