The OECD.AI Expert Group on AI Compute and Climate

Background

Alongside data and algorithms, AI computing capacity (“AI compute”) has emerged over recent years as a key enabler for AI and AI-enabled economic growth and competitiveness (Figure 1). While data and machine learning algorithms have received significant attention in policy circles at the OECD and beyond, the computational infrastructure that makes AI possible has been comparatively overlooked.  Since understanding domestic AI compute capacity is increasingly critical to formulating effective AI policies and informing national AI investments, the OECD is focusing efforts on this area in 2021.

The creation of a OECD.AI Expert Group on AI Compute and Climate in late 2020 seeks to help the OECD create a basic framework for understanding, measuring and benchmarking domestic AI computing supply by country and region.

The task force will coordinate the broad engagement of key AI compute players and a data gathering exercise that ideally would be sustainable over time. This task force will also need to be mindful that the AI compute landscape is unusually dynamic with technical shifts on a frequent basis.

To communicate about the outcomes of the OECD’s engagement in this domain, an interactive visualisation on OECD.AI could feature the work of the task force. The targeted focus of the ONE AI task force on AI compute complements the activities of the three ONE AI working groups.

Co-chairs & Members

Three Co-chairs lead the work of the expert group: Mr. Keith Strier, Vice President of Worldwide AI Initiatives at NVIDIA; Ms. Jennifer Tyldesley, Deputy Director of Economic Security for the UK Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport; and Mr. Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic. Ms. Sana Khareghani, former Head of the UK Office for Artificial Intelligence, and Mr. Satoshi Matsuoka, Director of the RIKEN Center for Computational Science, were formally Co-chairs of the expert group.

Participants include policy makers and entities in charge of public computing infrastructure as well as key industry players from: hardware providers; cloud service providers; original equipment manufacturers; academia engaged in AI compute; major data center operators; major consulting firms; and other experts on computing performance.

• The expert group’s full member list is available here.

Additional information

Download our Co-chair’s concept note