Welcomes "Earth Day", Microsoft empowers green future with AI

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

Technology empowers sustainable innovation, AI empowers green promise

In January 2020, Microsoft announced a major commitment to achieve negative carbon emissions by 2030 and eliminate the combined carbon emissions since the company was founded in 1975, including direct emissions or carbon emissions from electricity use by 2050. At the same time, Microsoft allocated a total of US$1 billion to establish a climate innovation fund to invest and accelerate the development of global carbon emission reduction, carbon capture and carbon elimination technologies. The "2021 Annual Environmental Sustainable Development Report" released last year showed that Microsoft's total emissions of Scope 1[1] and Scope 2[2] decreased by about 17% year-on-year, laying a solid foundation for achieving Microsoft's "2030 Goals" of negative carbon emissions, positive water resources and zero waste.

As a global technology company, Microsoft also incorporates its commitment to the environment into its globally renowned products. Just this month, Xbox launched the Remix Special Edition, the new Xbox Wireless Controller. As part of Microsoft's Xbox's commitment to a sustainable environment, the wireless controller uses recycled plastic, one-third of which is recycled from discs, kettles and other controller components; and its packaging also includes a set of Xbox rechargeable battery packs, allowing users to play without the use of single-use batteries. In fact, this is not the first time that Microsoft has used recycled materials in its products. Microsoft has launched a marine environmental mouse made of marine recycling plastics to fulfill its commitment to environmental sustainable development with practical actions.

Moreover, Microsoft's sustainable development concept is not only integrated into its hardware products, but also reflects the practices made by Microsoft for sustainable development in Windows 11, a highly representative software product. In addition to measures such as turning off the screen and letting the device enter sleep mode when the user is not using the device to reduce energy consumption and help extend battery life, Windows 11 has also added the "Energy Saving Recommendation" function, providing users with energy saving suggestions for "Power Mode", "Screen Brightness", "Sleep State" and other settings, reducing the power consumption of the device, 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., bringing a series of new generation PCs with its own "green talent", improving the environment with the majority of users and helping nature to cycle virtuously. In addition, this month, Microsoft Windows jointly launched the #Windows 11 Launch Your Green Talent# photography solicitation campaign with China National Geographic Channel and Intel to encourage more people to join in exploring the mysteries of green and sustainable development.

Joining hands for four years, Microsoft + Intel continues to help make breakthroughs in green technologies

As a strategic partner for many years and a global technology company, Microsoft and Intel have actively worked in the field of sustainable development and jointly established the "AI Love Earth" event brand. Since its inception in 2020, "AI Love the Earth" has been successfully held for four consecutive years. From explaining the direction and cases of AI to help sustainable development for developers, to jointly hosting the Hacking Pine Competition to attract developers and corporate teams to transform advanced AI technology into solutions that benefit society, "AI Love Earth" has successfully attracted the attention of tens of thousands of developers; thousands of developers have also actively participated in related competitions, conducting technical learning and communication, and jointly contributed technological strength to the green earth.

Microsoft and Intel continue to pay attention to and optimize the impact of AI on the environment, and develop and use the power of AI in a more responsible way. The development and breakthroughs in popular AI technologies 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 strong processing power, which can put a significant burden on the energy and the environment. Based on this, Microsoft and Intel launched a joint solution, combining Intel OpenVINO™ tool suite + Microsoft Intelligent Cloud Azure + ONNX Runtime. Developers can easily and efficiently quantify model accuracy or retrain the model accuracy, compress the volume and parameter volume 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 on the environment of large models.

In addition, Microsoft and Intel are also collaborating on environmental protection, smart edge computing, open source projects, and machine learning performance optimization, in order to promote the application and development of AI technology through joint efforts.