Businesses keen on AI for sustainability despite energy consumption concerns

The latest news in artificial intelligence (AI) including research, releases and partnerships. 

This week features:

• Businesses ponder AI for driving sustainability efforts
• AI strategy and governance lag behind adoption
• OpenAI launches new tools for developing AI agents
• Wells Fargo seeks new tech director to lead generative AI strategy

Businesses ponder AI for driving sustainability efforts

Over three quarters of businesses (76 percent) across Asia, Europe and the Middle East are intrigued by the potential of digital technologies such as AI for driving sustainability efforts, according to new research from Alibaba Cloud. The Tech-Driven Sustainability Trends and Index 2024, which quizzed over 1,300 decision-makers across 13 markets, found that AI and machine learning are viewed as the most crucial digital technologies for advancing corporate sustainability.

However, the substantial energy consumption associated with these technologies is still reflecting a key barrier to broader adoption, with 61 percent of respondents expressing concerns over the matter. Furthermore, 71 percent of businesses believe that the substantial energy consumption of digital technologies such as powering AI may outweigh its benefits

Meanwhile, more than half acknowledged a gap in understanding how digital technology can facilitate achieving sustainability goals.

Read PEX Network's guide to business sustainability

AI strategy and governance lag behind adoption

Separate research from the Connor Group revealed that AI strategy and governance lag dangerously behind adoption in financial services organizations. The H2 2024 AI Adoption Survey warned that, with AI adoption gaining momentum, many organizations are skipping foundational steps like planning, data preparation and governance deployment. Without these, AI initiatives risk falling short of expectations or creating major organizational risks, highlighting the need for a more structured, deliberate approach, it added.

Notably, only 27 percent of studied companies have completed at least one of these three foundational activities: defining AI goals and objectives, developing an AI strategy and roadmap or implementing AI governance. This is particularly concerning given that 75 percent of companies show strong adoption intent – for example adopting AI in two or more processes.

“Skipping critical foundational steps can lead to several challenges, including wasted resources and money, poorly integrated AI solutions, lack of buy-in and outcomes that do not offer a sustainable or valuable ROI,” the report read.

Watch Tyrone Smith Jr, program faculty member/adjunct associate professor at University of Southern California (USC) and founding member of Society of People Analytics, discuss building trust in AI

OpenAI launches new tools for developing AI agents

OpenAI launched new tools to help developers build advanced AI agents. “Over the past year, we’ve introduced new model capabilities – such as advanced reasoning, multimodal interactions new safety techniques – that have laid the foundation for our models to handle the complex, multi-step tasks required to build agents,” the firm stated. However, customers have shared that turning these capabilities into production-ready agents can be challenging, often requiring extensive prompt iteration and custom orchestration logic without sufficient visibility or built-in support, it added.

To address these challenges, OpenAI has released a new set of APIs and tools specifically designed to simplify the development of agentic applications. These are:

• The new Responses API⁠, combining the simplicity of the Chat Completions API with the tool use capabilities of the Assistants API for building agents.
• Built-in tools including web search⁠, file search⁠ and computer use⁠.
• The new Agents SDK⁠ to orchestrate single-agent and multi-agent workflows.
• Integrated observability tools⁠ to trace and inspect agent workflow execution.

These new tools streamline core agent logic, orchestration and interactions, making it significantly easier for developers to get started with building agents, OpenAI added. “Over the coming weeks and months, we plan to release additional tools and capabilities to further simplify and accelerate building agentic applications on our platform.”

Watch Andreas Welsch, author of the AI Leadership Handbook, reflect on the future of agentic AI

Wells Fargo seeks new tech director to lead generative AI strategy

Wells Fargo is seeking a new technology director to lead the development and delivery of generative AI applications for internal use. The role will oversee a high-performing agile software team and play a pivotal role in designing and implementing solutions safely utilizing large language models (LLMs), according to the job specification.

The successful candidate will have a strong technical background, proven leadership experience and a focus on delivering safe, accurate and user-centric solutions in an enterprise environment. Specific requirements include a strong focus on generative AI safety and accuracy, in-depth knowledge of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and agentic workflows in generative AI applications and strong experience collaborating with product and business stakeholders to deliver valuable and user-centric solutions. The role offers a compensation package of $207,900 – $431,900.

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