In 2023, we succeeded in developing a sustainability, cloud, and AI line of business. A goal for 2024 is to create a #coaching profile. Yes, we are spreading ourselves thin. However, a key tenant of Innate Innovation is to explore. Besides, we know those who show prowess in technology & science early on in their careers often miss the personal leadership training "corporate types" get throughout their careers. There's an opportunity to help the real innovators shine! We've participated in #technology, #career, #personalleadership, #marketinsight, and #corporategovernance activities with people across the pay grades. We've held workshops, educating and connecting many. It's hard to talk about the individuals we've helped. One thing we can speak about (and Steve has wanted to do for some time) is to go back to his undergraduate alma mater (RMIT) and contribute with small amounts of tutoring. He effectively coaches first years on what the innovating world needs, wants, and values while assisting the understanding of course material and even some marking!

Some recent work and articles have us thinking... Are privacy protections applied to technology platforms enough to enable AI (and the growth of industries from data) without overly weakening the liberties of individuals? Where do we see strong data liberties leading to greater AI potential? The linked article is interesting, as it calls out some shortfalls if we rely on privacy alone. For example: "It transfers the responsibilities for the harms of the data ecosystem to the individuals without giving them the information or tools to enact change." That is, individuals are empowered to control who can use the data at the point of providing the data. We influence how it is shared. However, we are not afforded the same opportunity during data use. And the potential for use is endless. Moreover, platform business models focus on driving more data input through personalisation and attention-grabbing, providing more data for more undetermined future use. Great business model! Except for the degree to which harm is readily accessible and prevalent. Moreover, there may be better ways to attain the scale of data needed to draw value from AI. The article's solution is to establish data cooperatives - entities that hold the data on individuals' behalf and, as an extensive collection of users, they can counter the weight of the platforms. We're not suggesting this is commercially wise for an individual platform or even a desperate societal priority. Instead, all types of organisations face this dynamic. We're asking: "If one begins investing in a strategic AI future, are there other models worth considering?" It is helpful to point out that data collectives are pervasive in the research sector. We've been through a decade or so of building such collectives, where initially, we did not know how the data would be used, nor the ROI of the effort. Data collectives / repositories / registries are emerging as the primary prerequisite by which the research sector applies AI to itself. The resultant datasets are more significant than the hoarded dataset of one researcher, one group and sometimes one discipline. Hence, the ability to coordinate large datasets is increasingly the rate-limiter to discoveries. The lubricant enabling trust and buy-in into large datasets is belief in the governance over the dataset/collective.

Occasionally, a story comes one way, debunking a commonly held sentiment... Most people presume that digital media, in this example, the Google Books project, will cause the end of physical books - the dematerialisation of literature. Amazingly, a study was recently released analysing the sales of 37,743 books that Google digitised between 2005 and 2009, and they found the project has increased sales of "paper" books by up to 8%! They found that around 40% of digitised titles saw their sales increase between 2003-2004 and 2010-2011. On the other hand, less than 20% of non-digitised titles had increased sales. The idea is that digitisation enables marketing & exposure at a scale inaccessible to the brick-and-mortar paradigm. Let's face it; it has taken 15-20 years to establish the evidence to debunk the sentiment. However, today, businesses face many concerns about the digital world. For example, will AI take my job? Or does my AI consume more carbon than it saves? We're constantly facing asymmetrical risk management decisions, where we know the penalty for a cyber breach today, but we do not know the future value of different options in controls. Hence, this article is a timely reminder. Because the public sentiment on the impact of digital leans one way, there is a real chance future evidence shows the opposite! Easy to read article about it: https://studyfinds.org/books-digitizing-literature-paper/ Paper: Abhishek Nagaraj & Imke Reimers in the American Economic Journal https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20210702

Our first news item for 2024 is that we are hosting a BoF at SC Asia to discuss the outcomes of last year's Sustainability of AI-scale Digital Research Infrastructure workshop report. Taking feedback from all quarters, we've distilled the needs to 4 targeted workshops: Demand response & efficiencies for compute-intensive DCs Why? Lift your awareness & access to environmental sustainability innovation in data centres, in particular nearer-term solutions, not reliant on major capital building works Dimensionalising an AI DRI ecosystem for NRIs Why? Gain a peer-wide uplift of awareness of AI within NRI communities Underpinning industrial platforms with an AI DRI Why? Awareness of best-practices at providing DRI (data & pipelines) into commercial plays Sustaining an AI DRI ecosystem with institutions Why? Explore commercial sustainability through co-designing with universities ... all seeking the safe & facilitated environment for suppliers and centres, private and public, big and small, to discuss these topics. Hence, we will also use the BoF to explore and prioritise these workshops. Come join us at SC Asia on Thursday Feb 22 in the afternoon. Reach out to engage, shape and secure your spot!

The report from the Sustainability of AI-scale Digital Research Infrastructure workshop @ eResearch Australasia is now available on the workshop's website. Organised by Innate Innovation, the workshop created a safe environment, enabling broad representation from the community to discuss and develop a shared understanding of an AI-centric future. Across all themes, we discussed matters across the hardware, services, platforms and research stack. It ratified the gaps in collective knowledge and provided an example approach for ecosystem-wide co-design of pre-competitive facets. Some key findings: At the data centre level, the Australian DRI ecosystem has sufficient buying power to adopt cooling innovation progressively, An increased consciousness exists to tailor performance/watt and cooling efficiency to local concerns, The critical gap, however, is the need for more attention given to software efficiency, given its dominant role in overall efficiency. With a baseline understanding set, community engagement & confidence in the format, and distinct themes with learnings, we propose a series of workshops to develop the questions and findings further. You can view the presentation version of the summary report online (expandable to full screen) or register to download the print-friendly version. Please get in touch with us for further evidence or details.

Innate Innovation partook in a mini-documentary cover story investigating the relationship between #AI and #sustainability. Put together by Digital Nation Australia, the documentary responds to the increasing awareness that AI may be for the #ESG good or may come at a cost. How is AI used to help to contribute to ESG goals in organisations? What is AI’s impact on ESG? How do these balance now and into the future? Speaking to the topic of a greener future in the 10minute documentary - we’re hopeful. Yes, on surface value, AI is changing our demands on computers. However, both the old guard and start-ups (see our Firmus Technologies Forge Partnership to Build a Global Network article) are tackling the impact of this change on efficiency and carbon emissions today. In our contribution to the documentary, you’ll hear us explain how the performance of algorithms behind AI is changing 1000-fold, contributing to decarbonisation at the application level. “We’re still in the baby era of AI algorithms, and algorithms when they improve, we’ve seen this over decades and over many of our world’s innovations, they improve a thousand-fold” We help customers map, measure and project in this complicated but critical space - to get your role in “AI can contribute $115 billion to Australia’s economy if implemented correctly” right!

Are you an #AI creator? An AI user? Or a quality data provider to AI? Adapting #LLMs to an organisation or project is compute-intensive, requiring dedicated use of traditionally #HPC-scale facilities. The electricity needed for data centres will explode, let alone the skills gap, which raises significant environmental, governance and cost questions. Are we ready for this? Join ARDC, BOM, CSIRO, NCI and Pawsey as we educate and explore what it means to develop a sovereign AI-scale digital research infrastructure ecosystem. This eResearch Australasia 2023 pre-conference workshop combines four distinct groups of our ecosystem: large research-centric datacentres, emerging sustainability-driven AI technology vendors, research- and industry-driving AI platforms, and research organisations & communities. And with Carmel Walsh's help, Innate Innovation is coordinating this event. Find more information at the workshop's official page.

Here is an excellent example of the innovator’s dilemma - the complexities of #socialconsciousness driving better #technologygovernance & #datagovernance in an environment desiring #speed and #agility. It’s a pattern we see all the time! A UK commissioner recently reprimanded NHS Lanarkshire (the national health service operating in a Scottish county) following the unauthorised use of #WhatsApp by 26 staff to share patients’ personal data over 500 times in two years. What’s the story? NHS Lanarkshire made limited use of WhatsApp available to staff as an environmental measure to increase speed and agility in response to the pandemic (working remotely, issues with IT systems, staff workload, etc). It seems the #cultural adoption of WhatsApp was too successful, such that not only did staff choose to use it for communicating patients’ #personaldata (especially images), but they also continued to do so well after the emergency of the pandemic. And then, a non-staff member was also added to the WhatsApp group in error, resulting in the inappropriate disclosure of personal information to an unauthorised individual. A clear break in public trust! The reprimand recognises the complexity, highlighting poor communication and training in data governance and WhatsApp as the root cause. However, it first points out NHS Lanarkshire’s insufficient balance in #risk assessment. Our read is it relied on staff behaviour to mitigate the open nature of the tool, seemingly without consummate measures in place. It’s not necessarily about saying no, but what it takes to say yes.

Having recently celebrated the first six months of Innate Innovation, we noticed a few big tech providers and users could readily access us, but much of our local industry couldn't. Part of the price of being niche and boutique. To expand our world-class technology strategy mandate to local industry, we needed help. Founded within the pandemic period, serving local SMEs, and with a human-centric and paradigm-changing approach, Techtify's values and capabilities are the perfect synergy for Innate Innovation. Techtify and Innate Innovation recently announced a collaborative venture to provide strategy services as part of Techtify's one-stop-shop approach for technology needs and to drive the novel Techtify approach to market further. ... or watch our 1 minute clip. "Having assisted peak innovators in fulfilling their commercial and social obligations through technology, partnering with Techtify is the optimal approach to making sought-after strategy, advise and implementation available to many", said Steve Quenette, Principal advisor & CEO of Innate Innovation "People are at the heart of what we do - offering strategy services to our comprehensive portfolio ensures our clients can begin to address the complex issues of our times," said Brent Valle, CEO of Techtify. Through Techtify, some of our best learnings and insights are available as smaller pieces and integrated into existing value/product streams.

Innate Innovation’s mission is to help organisations unblock the pathways to innovation and unlock #sustainability value through digital technology. Humankind adds another 33 billion tonnes of #carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually by burning fossil fuels. A proactive #energytransition posture or “going green” can serve two purposes - drive consumption efficiencies leading to more significant operating margins in the short term, and improve the #socialconsciousness towards your brand in the longer term. The question is ROI. Is offsetting a sustainable decarbonisation option? We have all heard of the inauthenticity in the carbon offset marketplace. But are a few bad apples enough to reconsider the offset, versus change towards sustainable technology? We decided share another reason why we need to innovate and decarbonise the digital landscape. Here’s the summary of the A tonne of fossil carbon isn’t the same as a tonne of new trees: why offsets can’t save us article. "Planting trees does not lock carbon away again deep underground" - necessary for maintaining a carbon/warming balance. "Instead, the introduced fossil carbon remains part of the active carbon cycle" - because releasing that carbon into the atmosphere is (e.g.) a bushfire away. What should we invest in to yield short- and long-term financial outcomes? Have we passed the inflection point where investment is necessary to be competitive? How do we measure and create a corporate (or product) environment that better guarantees an ROI target? And specifically in the #cloud, #HPC, #AI, #LLM and #data space? The space within which we excel!

Tagging along with Brent Valle / Techtify yesterday, visiting the Victorian Institute of Sport we came across a reminder that will excite all those with an inner athlete...

Product-market fit is a marvellous thing! Aussie ingenuity, investment, skills and a little help from Innate Innovation to cast and ratify truly global & sustainability-based technology play! #gotomarket #strategy Our client Firmus and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres have just announced a massive join-venture to roll out their ultra-sustainable AI computing platform - the HyperCube, across STT's global sites. Firmus is pioneering the combination of #modularDCs, #immersion and NVIDIA #DGX / #OVX at scale. The result - Sustainable Metal Cloud, is the quickest and cleanest way to source #generativeAI scale of #GPU #cloud resources! #sustainability #decarbonisation #decarbonization #hpc