To celebrate Earth Day, Microsoft uses AI to empower a green future

April 22, 2023, Beijing - Today, Microsoft and Intel jointly held the "AI Loves the Earth" World Earth Day event to jointly welcome the arrival of the 54th World Earth Day. Dr. Xu Mingqiang, Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Ecosystem Partner Division, and Dr. Li Ying, Vice President of Intel Corporation and General Manager of Intel China Software Ecosystem Division, attended the event to share Microsoft and Intel's respective strategic planning and development history in the field of sustainable development, as well as the actions and progress of the two parties' cooperation in using AI to empower sustainable development.

Technology empowers sustainable innovation, AI empowers green commitment

In January 2020, Microsoft announced a major commitment: to become carbon negative by 2030 and to eliminate the total carbon emissions since the company was founded in 1975 by 2050, including direct emissions or carbon emissions caused by electricity use. At the same time, Microsoft has allocated a total of US$1 billion to establish a Climate Innovation Fund to invest in and accelerate the development of global carbon emission reduction, carbon capture and carbon elimination technologies. The "2021 Environmental Sustainability Report" released last year showed that Microsoft's total scope 1[1] and scope 2[2] emissions decreased by approximately 17% year-on-year, laying a solid foundation for achieving Microsoft's "2030 goals" of negative carbon emissions, positive water resources benefits, and zero waste.

As a global technology company, Microsoft also integrates its commitment to the environment into its world-renowned products. Just this month, Xbox launched the new Xbox Wireless Controller Remix Special Edition. As part of Microsoft's Xbox commitment to a sustainable environment, this wireless controller uses recycled plastic, one-third of which is made from recycled discs, water bottles, and other controller components; and its packaging also includes a set of Xbox rechargeable battery packs, allowing users to play games without using disposable batteries. In fact, this is not the first time that Microsoft has used recycled materials in its products. Microsoft had earlier launched an ocean-friendly mouse made of recycled ocean plastic to demonstrate its commitment to environmentally sustainable development with practical actions.

Moreover, Microsoft's sustainable development concept is not only integrated into its hardware products, but also in Windows 11, a very representative software product, Microsoft's practices for sustainable development are also reflected in every aspect. In addition to measures such as turning off the screen and putting the device into sleep mode when the user is not using the device through the "Screen and Sleep" settings to reduce energy consumption and help extend battery life, Windows 11 also adds an "Energy Saving Suggestions" function, which provides users with energy-saving suggestions for multiple settings such as "Power Mode", "Screen Brightness", and "Sleep State" to reduce the device's power consumption, thereby helping to reduce the carbon footprint. Not only that, Microsoft has also cooperated with many partners such as Dell, Acer, Asus, Huawei, HP, Lenovo, Honor, Xiaomi, etc. to bring a series of Windows 11 new generation PCs with built-in "green talent", working with users to improve the environment and help nature's virtuous cycle. In addition, this month, Microsoft Windows, together with China's National Geographic Channel and Intel, jointly launched the #Windows 11 Start Your Green Talent # photography collection event, advocating that more people join in exploring the mysteries of green and sustainable development.

After four years of working together, Microsoft + Intel continue to promote green technology breakthroughs

As strategic partners for many years and global technology companies, Microsoft and Intel are actively working in the field of sustainable development and jointly created the "AI Loves the Earth" campaign brand. Since its launch in 2020, "AI Loves the Earth" has been successfully held for four consecutive years. From explaining the direction and cases of AI-assisted sustainable development to developers, to co-organizing hackathon competitions to attract developers and corporate teams to transform advanced AI technology into solutions that benefit society, "AI Loves the Earth" has successfully attracted the attention of tens of thousands of developers; thousands more developers have actively participated in related competitions, conducted technical learning and exchanges, and jointly contributed technological strength to a green earth.

Microsoft and Intel continue to focus on and optimize the impact of AI on the environment, and develop and use the power of AI in a more responsible manner. The development and breakthroughs in popular AI technology directions often require a large amount of data and computing resources to train and deploy deep learning models. These large models often require massive storage space, high-speed network connections, and powerful processing capabilities, thus placing a greater burden on energy and the environment. Based on this, Microsoft and Intel have launched a joint solution that combines the Intel OpenVINO™ tool suite + Microsoft Smart Cloud Azure + ONNX Runtime. Developers can quickly and efficiently quantify model accuracy or retrain, compress the volume and parameters of large models, and achieve the same performance on lower specification hardware platforms while ensuring model accuracy, thereby saving project investment, reducing energy consumption, and reducing the burden of large models on the environment.

In addition, Microsoft and Intel are also collaborating on environmental protection, intelligent edge computing, open source projects, and machine learning performance optimization, with a view to promoting the application and development of AI technology through joint efforts.