Combining Technology and Sustainability: the rise of "twin transformers" - Part II

Far from being exhaustive and well-aware that Sustainability cannot be limited to few lines of writing, together with Giuseppe Scozzaro , consultant in our #TechnologyStrategyandAdvisory practice from Accenture Italia , we are exploring how emerging market use cases related to Cloud (in a previous published article), Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, combined to improve Sustainability can contribute to companies’ future value and greater good for the society.

AI untapped for the exponential sustainability

 “We are at a pivotal moment. As artificial intelligence – AI – becomes more widely adopted, we have a tremendous opportunity to re-evaluate what we’ve created and ensure that AI is developed collaboratively and applied to the sustainable development goals, to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” [Tabitha Goldstaub - Co-Founder at CognitionX & Chair of the UK Government’s AI Council].

AI is an overarching term for a collection of technology algorithms and approaches that allow machines to perform human-like cognitive functions such as reasoning and learning.

The share of “AI-influenced” revenues (sales of same products/services with AI-driven insights, sales of new products/services with AI, higher pricing through dynamic pricing application thanks to Machine learning) has increased by 2.5X between 2018 and 2021 and is expected to roughly achieve 3.4X between 2018 and 2024.

The emergence of AI and its progressively wider impact on many sectors requires an assessment of its effect on the achievement of sustainability, clearly stated within the Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) developed by United Nations General Assembly (UN).

However, to date, there is no published study systematically assessing the extent to which AI might impact all aspects of sustainable development, defined within the SDGs mentioned above and the targets agreed within 2030 Agenda for SDGs. This represents a critical gap in research, as AI could strongly influence SDGs accomplishment.

The graphs show the potential of AI as enabler (A) or inhibitor (B) regarding SDGs. The percentages indicate the target effect of AI on each SDG and the ones in bracket indicate the actual effect demonstrated with all initiatives collected by United Nations (UN).

There are a variety of perspectives about AI and its potential impact on SDGs. For some, AI is a job killer, a tool that will benefit wealthier nations and citizens. On the other hand, AI is already starting to deliver benefits across sectors and geographies and holds great potential to help solve complex and interconnected sustainability challenges such as climate change, access to health care, and inequality.

Indeed, together with UN, several players and organizations are emerging to sustain and boost AI development for sustainability:

• 2030Vision, an alliance of businesses – governments – organizations – experts dedicated to maximizing the impact of new technology on SDGs, recognizes that AI will be a positive force for global sustainable development, suggesting that public and private institutions should work together to accelerate and scale the development and use of AI
• Several non-profit organizations & exhibitions emerged at the intersection of AI and SDGs. Just to mention a few of them, the “AI for Good Foundation” and “ITU’s AI for Good Summit”
• Many research & consulting organizations, such as Accenture, have published reports with information (use cases, economic impacts, risks, enabling factors, and more) supporting the continuous development of AI for business and quality of life improvement
• Public and private companies, working alone or in conjunction with other firms, have started to promote AI adoption for sustainability within their clients and communities

AI capabilities and technologies – Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Analytics and more – can bring great efficiencies, speed and intelligence to tasks and processes, and have enormous potential to address a wide range of sustainable development issues. A few examples are shown below, addressing different SDGs.

• AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY: AI can be applied to the design and operation of wind and solar farms to make them more efficient, for example orienting turbine heads to capture a greater portion of incoming wind. Google and DeepMind are deploying machine learning to manage 700 MW of wind power capacity in the US, resulting in a 20% increase in power management efficiency
• GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING: PrecisionLife has developed a platform that enables faster and deeper analysis of large genomic, clinical, and phenotypic datasets. This allows researchers to identify and validate multiple novel pathways, targets, and drug compounds involved in disease in weeks, not years, using clinical population datasets. This provides enormous productivity and innovation gain for pharma-biopharmaceutical research with up to 20% more precise personalized medicine
• SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES: PetaBencana.id combines AI, citizen reporting via social media, government flood alerts, and hydraulic sensor data to help megacities in South and Southeast Asia respond to and manage disasters. The solution is able to gather thousand of information each minute from 20-30 source of information and analyze them in a few minutes to increase response time to actual emergencies
• PEACE AND JUSTICE: HSBC is using AI to help spot money laundering, fraud, and terrorist funding. AI enables the bank to screen the vast amounts of data it holds about customers and their transactions against publicly available data, in the search for suspicious activity. Previously, HSBC effort to fight again money laundering fraud has accounted for about 5 Bln $ each year. With Quantexa solution, HSBC objective is to strongly increase efficacy (up to 20%) while significantly reduces associated costs.
• RESPONSIBLE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION: Winnow Vision deploys AI and computer vision to help restaurants and food service companies to better understand the volume and economic value of food waste. The camera sits above a waste bin and through image recognition, companies are made aware of the value of food waste. Winnow Vision has been installed in over 20 IKEA stores across the UK and Ireland. This supports IKEA’s goal to reduce food waste in IKEA supply chain and premises by 50%

Blockchain-enabled Environmental & Business Sustainability

From a Tech PoV, blockchain is a digitally distributed, decentralized ledger that can support its users to track and verify every transaction done on it. Even though blockchain is well known for the technology behind cryptos, its capabilities and potential can be of use also for environmental and societal challenges, from tracking the sustainability of products along a company supply chain to helping in monitoring city pollution.

The power of blockchain for sustainability lies in its “transparency”. Every transaction can be checked and confirmed by several actors, and no one can modify the data without the entire network being aware of it. Unlike the algorithms of big tech, blockchain transactions and rules are public and open to everyone (“a trust machine”). Thanks to these characteristics, applications built on blockchains have the potential to incentivize positive social and environmental impacts. A few examples are shown below.

• Power Ledger, a technology company in Australia, has started to explore the impact of blockchain. The organization established a pilot project in India's Uttar Pradesh. They allowed homeowners with solar panels on their rooftops to sell power to others on the grid. This involves setting up prices in real-time and implementing transactions over the blockchain. These systems can help increase the deployment of renewable energy. The Power ledger platform created a buying price for power that was 43% lower than the prevailing retail tariff.
• Food trust network, is a Blockchain-based system provided by IBM that connects all participants in the food supply through a permanent, shared and permissioned record of all food system data. Albertsons Companies, one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States, is joining IBM’s blockchain-based Food Trust network. Albertsons, which operates nearly 2,300 stores across America, will begin piloting Food Trust to improve how food is traced from farm to store shelf.
• Aura Blockchain Consortium, created in April 2021 by LVMH, Prada Group and Cartier (and continuously expanding – OTB Group, Mercedes-Benz, …), promote the use of a single global blockchain solution open to all luxury brands of all industry sectors worldwide to: 1) create a single blockchain solution platform open to all luxury brands worldwide to provide customers with additional transparency, traceability and product authenticity, fighting products counterfeiting (annual trade in fake goods is around $4.5 trillion); 2) allow luxury brands to strengthen their personal relationship with their customers in a new digital secure experience, where they can easily use their virtual products and have direct access to the best quality of service, resulting into increased customer interaction and engagement; 3) cover the entire lifecycle of luxury production and consumption; the set of integrated technology solutions ensures circularity of information, data ownership and privacy

Despite its many potentials, driving the penetration of emerging technology like blockchain will require improving the digital footprint. As blockchain and related digital technologies develop rapidly, policymakers shall work to adjust regulations that can in turn help to design future systems and mitigate risks.

Conclusion

As part of the research outlined in the last two articles, we have identified how technology and sustainability can be effectively deployed to bring advantages to companies, people and the environment. We have viewed many different applications of technology to enable sustainable practices which must be at the center of each company strategy:

• Cloud: while enabling service-based economy, providers can guarantee transparency (how each resource is precisely allocated / usage) and work towards a reduced-emissions digital infrastructure thanks to public cloud
• AI: encompass many capabilities and technologies to both support company business growth while enabling the accomplishment of several / all UN SDGs in different use cases
• Blockchain: a digitally distributed-decentralized ledger that can support its users to track and verify every transaction done on it, enabling full transparency and traceability

Markets are changing and customers are calling out for sustainable practices and environmental respect. Data shows how technological devices are increasingly becoming part of our daily life, so it is our responsibility to properly exploit available technology to improve business practices which have a strong impact on the environment and on the quality of our daily life.