How Can You Promote Sustainable AI in the Workplace?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a key driver of productivity and innovation in the workplace. From automating repetitive tasks to providing valuable insights from vast amounts of data, AI helps employees work smarter and faster. However, it can also come with risks like bias, security vulnerabilities, lack of transparency, and high energy consumption.

To tackle these challenges, companies must adopt a sustainable AI approach. In other words, they should use AI in ways that are economically, environmentally and socially responsible. Additionally, they should ensure that AI systems are used ethically and transparently, while safeguarding data confidentiality, and promoting fairness and inclusion.

Whether you rely on AI tools daily or are just starting to explore their potential, implementing sustainable AI practices is essential for long-term success. In this article, we’ll guide you through practical steps to assess the sustainability of your current tools, set clear objectives, and train your teams for responsible AI use.

Assess How Sustainable Your AI Is

Before you can improve the sustainability of AI in your organization, it’s important to assess where you currently stand. Conducting an AI sustainability assessment will help you understand your strengths, identify gaps, and guide future improvements.

In Germany, the SustAIn project has created a self-assessment tool that uses 13 criteria to evaluate the social, environmental and economic sustainability of AI. These include:

• Transparency and accountability: Are AI decisions transparent and easy to understand? Who is responsible for AI outcomes?
• Non-discrimination and fairness: Do your AI systems promote fairness, or could they unintentionally unbiased opinions? What’s being done to prevent discrimination?
• Energy consumption: How much energy do your AI systems use? Are they optimized for energy efficiency?
• Greenhouse gas emissions: What steps are you taking to reduce the carbon footprint of your AI systems (e.g., optimizing training times, using renewable energy)?
• Data protection: Are people’s data protected and kept confidential? Do users have control over how their data is used? Are there clear data security measures?
• Inclusive design: Are diverse perspectives included in the development of your AI systems? Can your AI adapt to different cultural contexts?

If you speak German, the easiest way to get started is to take the questionnaire developed by the SustAIn project. Otherwise, you can create your own customized assessment based on these criteria.

To evaluate the transparency of your AI tools, we also recommend checking resources like the Foundation Model Transparency Index, which provides reports on models like ChatGPT, Mistral, Claude and Gemini.

Educate Employees 

Once you’ve assessed your AI’s sustainability, the next step is to educate your employees. Sustainable AI isn’t just the responsibility of leadership or technical teams—it requires awareness and understanding across the board.

Start by explaining what sustainable AI is and what economic, social, and environmental impacts it can have. Use the results of your sustainability assessment to customize your training plan. For instance, if your organization excels in data protection but needs improvement in energy efficiency, focus more on teaching energy-saving practices for AI tools.

Incorporate this training into onboarding to ensure new hires grasp the importance of responsible AI use. Schedule additional sessions as needed to keep employees up to date on new AI regulations, tools, and practices. After each session, conduct short assessments to ensure they can apply the best practices you’ve taught them.

Set Clear Objectives

To ensure that your AI practices become more sustainable, it’s crucial to set clear, measurable objectives. These goals should be tied to both the company's overall vision and specific department needs, making them practical and actionable at all levels.

Start by collaborating with each department to define specific targets. A good way to approach this is through OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). The OKR methodology helps break down ambitious goals into measurable actions that can be tracked and assessed over time.

Here are a few examples of OKRs to promote sustainable AI:

• Objective 1: Reduce the environmental impact of AI operations.some text
  • Key Result 1: Decrease AI energy consumption by 20% over the next year by optimizing algorithms and switching to energy-efficient hardware.
• Objective 2: Enhance the transparency of AI decision-making processes.some text
  • Key Result 2: Increase the use of explainable AI tools by 50% to help users understand AI decisions.
• Objective 3: Promote fairness and diversity in AI models.some text
  • Key Result 3: Conduct bias audits on all AI models by the end of Q3 and retrain any models that show signs of bias.

Also read: Examples of Company OKRs: How Did They Do It?

Tools like Holaspirit can help you define, visualize and track your OKRs. Moreover, they enable you to connect your AI sustainability goals to your broader company vision, ensuring alignment across teams. So make sure to take advantage of it!

Implement the Right AI Tools 

To achieve your sustainability objectives, it's essential to use AI tools that are aligned with your goals. Here’s how to approach this:

• Evaluate your current tools: Review your existing AI tools. Do they align with your sustainability goals? If not, adjust how you use them or consider switching to more eco-friendly alternatives.
• Choose tools based on your needs: Identify the specific problems you want to solve with your AI tools. Based on this, determine whether you need business tools with AI capabilities (e.g., a collaboration platform with a chatbot feature) or specialized AI solutions like ChatGPT. Also, decide whether a single centralized tool or multiple best-of-breed tools will best serve your organization.
• Identify key criteria for choosing AI tools: When selecting new AI tools, consider the key criteria they should meet, and use those to choose the best solution for you. For example:some text
  • Energy efficiency
  • Data security and privacy
  • Transparence
  • Fairness and inclusivity
  • Compatibility with existing tools
  • Cost and scalability
  • Ease of use and deployment

If you’re looking for all-in-one tools that offer more than just AI features, Talkspirit and Holaspirit are great options. In addition to improving communication, collaboration and governance, they also offer AI features that boost sustainable performance. These include:

• An AI-powered org chart that automatically generates content for roles and circles, allowing you to map your organization twice as fast!
• An FAQ chatbot that answers common employee questions, saving valuable time for HR and managers.

Adopt Sustainable AI Initiatives

Once you’ve set clear objectives and implemented the right tools, the next step is to adopt short- and long-term initiatives aligned with your OKRs. For example, you can:

• Create an "AI Sustainability Officer" role (using Holaspirit’s org chart, for example) to monitor AI’s environmental impact, transparency, and fairness. 
• Schedule AI audits to check for bias, inefficiencies, and energy consumption. Regular reviews will keep your AI systems aligned with sustainability goals.
• Stay ahead of regulations like the EU AI Act by establishing a review process to monitor legal standards and appointing a team to update your AI processes as needed.
• Set up cross-functional working groups with members from different departments to address sustainability from multiple angles (e.g., IT for energy use, and HR for fairness and inclusivity).

Document and Share Best Practices

To ensure sustainable AI becomes ingrained in your organization’s culture, it’s crucial to document and share best practices. Here’s what we recommend:

• Centralize all documentation on sustainable AI initiatives, using tools like Holaspirit’s publication feature, so employees can easily access and apply them.
• Use Talkspirit’s chat and news feed features to highlight successes, and motivate teams to follow best practices.
• Acknowledge teams or individuals who drive sustainable AI initiatives to foster engagement and ownership.
• Encourage employees to share ideas for improving AI sustainability and continuously refine practices through open discussions.

En conclusion

Promoting sustainable AI is about more than just implementing the right tools. It’s about embedding ethical and responsible practices into the core of your operations. By assessing your AI tools, educating employees, setting clear goals and adopting targeted initiatives, you can ensure AI continuously drives innovation and sustainability.

AI-powered tools like Holaspirit and Talkspirit can help you document this process transparently, and ensure your sustainability efforts are aligned with your company’s purpose. They can thus make a great addition to your AI tech stack!

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