What does it mean to be a truly sustainable business? What factors should be included in the definition of 'sustainability'? In this episode, Yadin sits down with Srini Koushik, President of Technology, Sustainability, and AI at Rackspace. The two discuss the 'Three E’s' of sustainability that should be top of mind for tech leaders and delve into examples of how this framework applies to recent technologies.
hat does it mean to be a truly sustainable business? What factors should be included in the definition of 'sustainability'? In this episode, Yadin sits down with Srini Koushik, President of Technology, Sustainability, and AI at Rackspace. The two discuss the 'Three E’s' of sustainability that should be top of mind for tech leaders and delve into examples of how this framework applies to recent technologies. They specifically dissect the sustainable use of AI and explore the various considerations regarding how to employ it."
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“As technologists, we live and operate in an environment that has the ability to impact this in a meaningful way. How you choose the technologies you use, how you consume it, how do you kind of make it available to a broader subset of people so that they can enjoy the benefits that technology brings, those are all things under our control.”
“As technology leaders, we're going to have to be a lot more conscious about the decisions we make as to where you use technology and how you do that. I think the sustainability framework we've been talking about gives you a much better, it's not that you're not going to make mistakes, but, it will be, it'll kind of weed out some of the really bad ideas very quickly”.
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Timestamps:
(00:50) Sustainability beyond the “green aspect”
(02:01) The three “E’s” of sustainability
(04:29) Applying the three E’s to AI
(06:46) Ethical and “green” use of AI
(09:40) AI to augment humans
(18:00) The evolution of the definition of sustainability
(23:07) The progression of technology and human knowledge
(27:55) We broke it, and we can fix it
(31:32) Will AI reach everyone equally?
(33:02) Call to action for technology leaders
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0:00:00.0 Srini Koushik: As technologists, we love new tech. Anything new comes out, like we're going out and getting certifications and others like that. Sustainability is the latest cool tech. Go understand.
0:00:11.0 Yadin Porter De León: Welcome to the CIO Exchange podcast. We talk about what's working, what's not, and what's next. I'm Yadin Porter de León. Environmental sustainability is an essential conversation for business and tech leaders, as it should be. But do we need to take a broader approach to sustainability in business and IT? What elements do we need to think about when considering sustainability that will ensure that the business remains viable and competitive so that it endures. In this episode, I speak with Srini Koushik, president of Technology sustainability and AI at RackSpace, who shares the framework they use to think about this. From supply chain risk to technology investment, Srini and I discuss how companies can survive in a turbulent future. Srini, you've talked about the need for a broad approach to sustainability in IT, beyond just the green aspect, can you describe what other dimensions of sustainability should be factored in, like efficiency and agility to navigate disruption? Like talking about, like, volatile energy prices, rising material costs, investor pressure, lots of different things that companies have to deal with while still delivering that superior value to customers and outperforming competitors in the market. What's that definition of sustainability?
0:01:21.4 Srini Koushik: First of all, it's a pleasure to be here and look, the definition of sustainability that we tend to use at RackSpace and I personally like, is one that mirrors very closely the World Economic Forum's description of sustainability. They define it in terms of the three E's. Obviously, everyone focuses on the environmental sustainability, and that is very important. Given the state of our planet right now. Environmental sustainability is very, very critical to us. However, the other two E's end up being the economic sustainability, because what good is a green planet if you don't have people who can kind of take advantage of it? And if people cannot partake in the advances that are being made, it's not there. So the economic sustainability is a big component of it. How do you make sure that the benefits of technology and everything else that we do benefits the broader population and lifts all boats? And then the third component of it is, can you do it in a way that is equitable? And if you kind of look at the last 20 years of technology, clearly, I'm one of those one percenters who benefited from all the benefits of technology. But then, at the same time, income inequality has grown. Technology is not accessible equally to everyone, so having that equitable aspect of sustainability is important. So to truly be sustainable, technology has to address all three of those, Es.
0:02:45.7 Yadin Porter De León: The uneven distribution of both the economic component and the equitable component is, I think, really critical in that piece, too. From the perspective of the business, how do you, in your capacity, where you are, from a technology perspective, when you're looking at some of these different disruption components, when you're looking at how do I accomplish creating that equitability that's sustainable economically, and how do you start approaching those?
0:03:13.7 Srini Koushik: That's a great point. Again, let me use artificial intelligence as an example, right. And I think today you can't get to a second conversation without talking about AI, right? And let me put it in the context of sustainability and the way we look at it. I think, first of all, AI presents a very, very interesting challenge in terms of green sustainability, because every new AI training run consumes, depending on the size of the foundational model, it consumes anything like putting five gas-powered cars on the road. For a year. And so there's a lot of energy that's spent in driving a lot of these AI workloads. So I think when you look at it from a green standpoint, it is about making sure that you're focusing on responsible AI, right? So while it's interesting that I can type in a prompt and it can generate any image that I want, how is it actually responsible? Is it benefiting humanity? Those types of things you can actually factor in. So applying responsible AI really means can I build applications and AI solutions that are safe for human beings, that are secure and protect the privacy of data and information, but also, can they do it in such a way that you are being very judicious about how you consume power and electricity and how you actually leverage AI to be able to use that?
0:04:38.6 Srini Koushik: So the green part of it is actually, I will tell you, is a challenge. I always kind of half joke saying the only green technology is the one that you don't use because if, technology is a necessary evil, then the idea is, how do you become more efficient and effective about how you use that? That's the green challenge.
0:05:00.6 Yadin Porter De León: One quick thing, too, because you mentioned something. I think it was really important, and that was the responsible use of AI. And I think when people usually say that, they usually talk about it ethically, is there bias in the system? Has it been trained using data that is valuable, that's going to create valuable use, and are using it for dangerous things to hurt others or to misinform others? But responsible use of AI is realizing that there's a tremendous amount of power that's consumed, especially in some of the high density workloads. There's also a ton of water cooling that's leveraged in those data centers. And is it responsible for me to create sonnets about anything I want to create a sonnet about while consuming all that energy and water and silicone and all the other components, is that responsible? So I think, just like we do when we turn water on our tap or we use electricity in our house, we think about, well, turn the lights off, don't waste water. I think people need to start thinking about, I love that you brought the sub-training. People start thinking about turning the tap off to AI and not just using it, just to use it, 'cause they can use it, because it's free right now, especially for a lot of people.
0:06:02.2 Srini Koushik: I'm so happy you brought up that analogy, because it's the way I talk about sustainability to our customers, to our employees and others. It's like there's two aspects of it, right? So what a lot of people don't know is 80% to 85% of the energy spent goes into the process of creating something. Everybody is excited about electric cars. Well, 80% to 85% of the energy consumed when you're actually create, when an electric car is created in the manufacturing process, and when you make those materials, and then the other 15% is really consumed when you are using the product for the longer run. So just like we do at home, making the right choices from a technology standpoint. So do I put an led bulb instead of an old fashioned filament based bulb? Right. That's a technology choice that you make, but that's an investment that you make at the start. But then over the lifetime of that product, you're constantly looking at, how are you consuming it? Am I turning it off when I leave the room? Right? Do I run my AC at 74 degrees or do I run it at 69 in the middle of summer? Right. That's a consumption-based thing that you have to do. And I think we in technology have to spend a lot more time on both sides. Right? Choosing what to create, but also how you consume that. I am the parent of two amazing daughters that grew up like one half and half in the Internet age and the other one solely in the Internet age.
0:07:32.5 Srini Koushik: And I tell them they're very responsible, but I tell them, like, look, it's great that you're looking at older guys like me and saying, you should have been more responsible with this. And I take that criticism to heart. But as we were kind of having this conversation over lunch, I just saw you take 10 pictures of that food that you were using. Where do you think that goes? Right? There's a network consumption, there's a storage consumption. It never gets deleted. So look, we all have to be very, very conscious about what we choose to use technology for and how do we drive that. That's a very integral part of sustainable and responsible AI. The other parts that are equally important is you mentioned it, it has to be safe. But I extend it even farther, saying, if we build AI to replace human beings, then I don't think it's responsible. Right now, if you actually build AI that augments a human's capability, that's very responsible right? Because it's like, kind of allows me to move away from the day-to-day toil to work on higher levels.
0:08:36.1 Yadin Porter De León: Thinking versus thunking. And AI takes the thunking out and we can do the real thinking.
0:08:40.8 Srini Koushik: That's a good way to...
0:08:42.1 Yadin Porter De León: I stole it from the person at Google. So you can steal it from me too.
0:08:44.0 Srini Koushik: I love that. I'm going to use that. Right. The thunking versus thinking. But that's absolutely critical. And so I think that's a responsible use for AI because if that means that we're going to spend not 60 hours doing stuff that's meaningless, but you can spend 30 hours doing something that's meaningful, but then you have that the rest of the time to support the family, to bring up the family properly, it's economically sustainable. Right. Because you are actually, in order for us to continue to thrive in this world, we have to keep learning. But it's tough to keep learning when you don't have the time to do any of that stuff, and all you're doing is this routine, mundane thunking work. Right?
0:09:24.8 Yadin Porter De León: No, I think you hit on something incredibly well. Those two things. One, that, that wrapping economic sustainability isn't just the stinks-in sustain of the business, it's also the sustainability, the economic sustainability of the people who are in the business, employed by the business, consumers of the business. They have to be included in that economic sustainability.
0:09:42.7 Srini Koushik: Yeah. More specifically, to an example to that, we launched the foundry for AI by RackSpace earlier in the spring. Right. And one of the first things that we launched along with it was a program called Fair Learn, which is a program that allows people to go take classes from MOOCs, whether it's Deep learning.AI, or LinkedIn learning, and others. Think Coursera, think Udemy, think Udacity, those guys, right? We created the program and made it available. And we told all Rackers that in one year, we want 100% of Rackers to be AI ready. We did that because we believe that, like a year from now, AI is going to be in everything we do. And if we don't get our people prepared for it and ready to be really good coworkers for AI, it's going to be detrimental, right? Like, if somebody is working on something that is primarily thunking, and they believe that their value is in that, you've got to kind of give them something else, otherwise it will replace them. And it's then going back to this thing around economic viability, right? Like their viability, which they were doing very well, doing thunking work, and now that's gone. So the economic sustainability is an equally important part of what you put in. And then the equitable is what you talked about quite a lot, right? Which is, I think, the equitable component of it is all about how do we make sure that the bias in AI is eliminated?
0:11:15.5 Srini Koushik: How do you make sure that you reduce the harmful effects of it? And this is an area where, just sticking with the AI example, it presents a lot of possibilities, right? You've seen those applications that help blind people kind of perceive what they're not seeing. They're in there, and the AI is telling them, you've got this. You've seen the applications where it really does help from a translation standpoint, from one language to the other, on the fly. Those are really cool applications which expand the access of technology to a variety of people, and not just those who can speak English or who have been blessed with the opportunity to have all five senses to be able to use them. It's about making that equitable access. So when we pick solutions, if you use those three as your filters, you will tend to pick more responsible AI solutions. And that applies to everything, right? Take it back to cloud computing if you're going to move something to a cloud, but just put those three factors in, you will make different decisions that actually help you live a more sustainable future.
0:12:23.0 Yadin Porter De León: Great foundational explanation of how to create a sustainable business. And I think if more people adopt that framework, then we get more applications being responsibly produced, being sustainably produced, not just for the business, for those consuming them, for those working at the company, because there are going to be people that pretty much produce any model that you can possibly imagine that's going to do everything you can possibly imagine. But if those can be the long tail, if those can be the fringe, not the bulk of what we do, if the bulk of what we do can be done sustainably using that framework that you're talking about, I think then we have a very different path forward. We have a far more risk able progression. And I think that's why some of the people who are looking at these big companies, like, why weren't you doing this earlier? Some, in many cases is because they were trying to be part of this framework or all of this framework, or leveraging all of this framework to be doing these things responsibly, not just using these things upon the planet and seeing what happens.
0:13:12.1 Srini Koushik: Yeah, I think that framework actually does help a lot more, because if you applied that framework properly, we wouldn't have gone through the whole NFT and cryptocurrency mining and, because think about it's the...
0:13:30.1 Yadin Porter De León: It Wasn't that fun? Yeah.
0:13:33.0 Srini Koushik: It's the same Nvidia GPUs, it's the same energy consumption. Everything else that we're seeing right now with AI. But to do what? To create an NFT of my dog that I have a version of it sitting out there that somebody assigned a fictional value to that doesn't, wealth doesn't go to is not equitably shared between people. Right. Because it's the rich getting richer versus who don't have that gap continues to grow. I think as technology leaders, we're going to have to be a lot more conscious about the decisions we make as to where you use technology and how you do that. And I think the sustainability framework we've been talking about gives you a much better. It's not that you're not going to make mistakes, but it'll kind of weed out some of the really bad ideas very quickly.
0:14:17.9 Yadin Porter De León: Yeah, and I think especially when you're using some of the large resources to be able to create some of these things at scale. I think that's where those responsibility frameworks come into that sustainability action and being able to have the massive impact. Like, I had a great conversation with Missy Young, who's the CIO of Switch, really huge, gigantic data center provider using sourcing green energy, recycling water. But at the same time, there's still silicone that goes into that, there's still other components that go into those things. And when someone, and she's, their capacity is being bought out years in advance before they've even poured the concrete on these data centers. So those companies are deciding what resources are going to be spent already years in advance to be able to run what kind of models, what will they do? Who will they help? Who will they be for?
0:15:01.5 Srini Koushik: Technology leaders, by the way, I love Switch. And what they do. Look, until that, I'm passionate about the sustainability topic. I think technology leaders can make good, solid decisions. Right. Here's one that we think about in terms of, if you understand the fact that in order to make this laptop, most of the energy to make this laptop was spent when it was created. And then after that, it's all about consumption to do this, one of the things that most IT leaders do is at the end of a useful life. And whatever they define the useful life, three years or four years of, as we see the corporate environment, they sell it to people who recycle it and drive that. Well, IT leaders should think of upcycling it. And what I mean by upcycling is three, four year old top that you've got probably benefit an underprivileged student in a school a lot more than.
0:15:58.2 Yadin Porter De León: Oh yeah.
0:16:00.0 Srini Koushik: Selling it for $100 bucks and having someone recycle it. Right? So if that laptop finds a way to make it into the hands of these schools that are struggling to go drive that, you actually are thinking about the sustainability in that true, how do you actually do economic, equitable and environmental way. So it just gives you some really interesting options that, shame on us, we didn't think about it 20 years ago, but it'll be even worse if we don't do it starting now. Right. Given the state of the planet.
0:16:29.5 Yadin Porter De León: Exactly. Just like the old proverb. That is, when's the best time to plant a tree? 10 years ago. When's the second best time? Right now.
0:16:37.2 Srini Koushik: Excellent.
0:16:37.6 Yadin Porter De León: And give me a sense too of sort of what your experience has been in the evolution of the definition of sustainability, the evolution of artificial intelligence, because the two of them seem to be converging this very unique way at this time. Both have been around the idea of sustainability, both AI ML been around for a long time. But now we're getting this convergence where you have billions of dollars being put into this technology to be used for what? Question mark. Is it good? Is it not good? Are we making the right choices here? And then a greater emphasis on this new framework that you're talking about. Tell me a little bit about how that, you've seen those two evolve and then now converge. 'Cause I think that's fascinating to me.
0:17:17.2 Srini Koushik: Well, it's not going to be any great insights that come in. It's basic human nature. Right. I don't, I think most humans don't act until there's a burning platform they're standing on.
0:17:28.5 Yadin Porter De León: That's true. That's very true. Till it's out they're all wow. It actually is. A meteor actually is coming to the earth. Maybe we should do something.
0:17:35.0 Srini Koushik: So, although we have had this information, and I was on a different call in the morning, and I said, hey, guys, let's remember that the term artificial intelligence was coined 70 plus years ago. And when you kind of think about everything that's been done, everything from. I got my master's degree in the '80s. And my area of specialization was artificial intelligence, but it was very rudimentary things that we talked about, and it's been on a slow burn for 70 years. It's the same thing with sustainability. Everybody knew conservation was important. When you had the oil shock of the '70s it was all about independence, but it was also about the dependent. That's when you saw smaller cars come out. That's when you saw Japanese cars take precedence over US cars. Right. So everybody realized it. But until it's a crisis, we don't get the type of things done. And I think that's one of the key things that's consistent with both sustainability and artificial intelligence today. Number one on the sustainability front. Just look out the window. Let's forget all the political debates around it. But you can at least agree that the really extreme weather events, the frequency has gone up and the amount of damage that it's causing has gone up. Right. To human life, to property, everything else.
0:18:49.2 Yadin Porter De León: And you see it so like where you're saying like nobody does anything until there's a burning platform. In California, here... I'm in California, so I was just joking actually before we would do the recording that we have four seasons here, just like everyone else. It's fall, it's winter, it's spring and it's fire. That's our fourth season. And it is, it's consistent. And we're already seeing insurance companies reacting to it and no longer providing certain coverage in certain places because we're on a burning platform in certain areas from a financial standpoint, from a business standpoint, they're not seeing economic sustainability in certain areas based on their business model.
0:19:15.6 Srini Koushik: Yeah. Well look, I love California. I lived in California for 10 years, right? I lived in Los Gatos in northern California, right. Like in outside of this... And I think the fire in 2020 came about a mile and a half away from where we lived, right? And then in the 10 years that I lived there, I saw San Francisco change from what it was to where it is today. And I think it's a consequence of not thinking of broader sustainability, right? Like in terms of, look, even if everybody says the weather in California is fantastic and It is for the most part. But at the same time, the economic inequality that's being created, the income bag gap that's being created is a contributing factor, it may not be the primary. It's a contributing factor, the homelessness and the other challenges you have in that space.
0:20:03.7 Srini Koushik: So these things are interrelated. So I think that's that. But back to your original question, I think in the sustainability front, we do have a burning platform. Most people are starting to recognize that. And as insurers and everybody else starts backing off, it's gonna get worse in that space. And then in the AI pace, it's the other thing, it's kind of an interesting dichotomy because there's a lot of... I'm one of those glass half full guys who does believe that responsible AI is going to be the future on this piece, but it's not going to be without it's... I'm not one of those guys who thinks the future of matrix is what our future is. Like machines are gonna be running and we're gonna be fueled.
0:20:45.3 Srini Koushik: I like that. However, I think the path from here to the future of responsible AI is gonna be filled with potholes that we're going to have to navigate to go drive that, the good news is people have seen that enough that when you see regulators in the US perking up, right? Then you just say, okay, there's something seriously that's going on. 'Cause Europe always tends to be a leader in the space, whether it's in green or in AI regulations or something like that. But the gap between the European regulations and the US-based regulations are not gonna be that big this time around because they are following very quickly in this space. So I believe because of that, you see the interesting conversions of both of those trends being front and center in people's minds. That's definitely one. I do think there's also a... Here's the glass half full version of me.
0:21:37.1 Yadin Porter De León: Oh, good. We're gonna get some glass half full stuff. That's good.
0:21:40.2 Srini Koushik: Yeah, no, no. One of the coolest things about knowledge is... Like I'm a pretty old guy, right? And I've seen this technology evolution from the point in time it's been punch cards to what we have today and what's coming for the next few years. And the amount of knowledge that humanity has gained has been fascinating to me. I studied about DNA and Watson and Crick when I got to college, right? Because it was discovered in the late '60s, early '70s, by the time it made it into the curriculum and others, it was late '70s. All my middle schoolers learned about it, right? 10 years ago right now. And what's been done with the Human Genome Project and others. And if you kind of think about the compounding effect of that much knowledge, it is pretty cool to imagine what all it can be used for in the future. That excites me because I think my granddaughter is gonna have a better future if we let her have it.
0:22:39.6 Yadin Porter De León: Yeah. I like that. If we let Sarah have it. And do you think these new large learning models are gonna be able to take that data and synthesize it and then do something hopefully useful with it? Do you think that is part of that future where good things can be done from a sustainability standpoint, whether economically, whether it's from a green standpoint?
0:22:58.1 Srini Koushik: I believe so, right? So here's a real example, right? You have heard of the Khan Academy, right? Sal Khan and...
0:23:07.8 Yadin Porter De León: Yes.
0:23:07.9 Srini Koushik: Out of the Bay Area driving that. I was listening to him the other day and he said look, AI's gonna be helpful. And I never thought about it this way, but the more I think about it, it makes sense, right? Go back 2000 years ago, education was a teacher teaching three or four students, pupils that you brought up. And the level of knowledge you were able to impart the personalization was pretty significant. As humanity evolved, you got the schools and you had no public schools with a teacher desperately trying to teach 60 kids in a school in order for to make sure that every kid learns the same, you have to dumb it down so that it really matches all 60.
0:23:46.8 Srini Koushik: So you're not tapping into the potential. It's not the way he used the words. He used much more articulate this Srini saying, and yet to kind of bring it down to the lowest common denominator so that you can bring everybody along. What that does is it really doesn't help the more advanced folks because they can't learn faster. It doesn't help the people who are struggling also 'cause you're at the average and they're still not able to catch up with the average. What AI has the ability to do and what they're experimenting with in others is you can have personalized tutors. So if I am slow at learning things, it can come down to my level to be able to teach me and bring me along. There's a really positive thing because it's like now you may have a different solution to how you teach. You may have a different solution to what college degrees could look like 10 years from now, right? You may have a different solution to what people... Like so everybody's not, oh, I'm a mechanical engineer and I went through the same curriculum over and over again. Now I can kind of play to my strengths, right? Where I'm a mechanical engineer, but somehow I like songwriting. So I was able to kind of go do that as well and thrive in the areas that's there.
0:24:58.9 Yadin Porter De León: No, I love that.
0:25:00.0 Srini Koushik: Yeah. So I love the fact that... I think those are the possibilities. And given the fact that this base of human knowledge continues to grow and that entire base of human knowledge is available to me through a tutor that can actually help me is exciting to me, right? Yes, there's downsides, right? Like if it's like GPT-3 and 3.5 and you've trained the thing based on the entire corpus of information available on the internet today, there's good and bad stuff on there, right? So why are you surprised that it's gotten harmful pieces? But if you can, like for instance, in the teaching space do that, you can actually bring out and tailor the lesson plan or tailor how fast you are or slow You learn to each individual person. So you get to the point where this is not about political statements or something like that, but no child is ever left behind, right?
0:25:55.7 Srini Koushik: Because you can actually make sure that you're tailoring it to their pieces. And now back to this conversation around teachers and what they do, it's not like the teacher's job goes away. Now you can actually do things where most teachers that I talk to, they do it because they love the profession, but at the same time they feel pretty bad that they don't have the right resources to bring everybody along and others. And here's a place where you've gotten out of their thunking and into a place where they can actually do that. So I think that's the potential that AI has. And it's the same thing with sustainability. The more solutions you come up with for carbon capture all of these other things like we screwed this up, we can fix it, right? And I tend to be one of those guys that's always like yeah we can fix it.
0:26:40.7 Yadin Porter De León: I like it. We broke it. We fix it. And I love the analogy with sort of the kids and the personalization, because I feel like that really translate into, let's say, the world of technology leaders and they have different people in our team with different strengths. And it's funny 'cause you said it made you think differently and it's kind of making me think differently, like where you don't just have your network engineer or you don't just have your storage admin, or you don't just have... You have different people who can move at different speeds spending on the whole corpus of skills. And if they've got this AI who can fill in some gaps, like there's certain things where like I have weaknesses, AI's already filling those in so I can do more than I could even imagine before. Like we can't even imagine what these roles are gonna look like with copilots.
0:27:20.0 Yadin Porter De León: And it's not gonna be, like Hey, I'm gonna take this away from you. Like no, you can start doing things that were better than were before. There's a great study that came out with with Harvard and I think the Wharton School where they talked about the productivity of lower performers, "lower performers". And that the skills gap it just... I used air quotes of course for those listening the skills gap was closed immensely from people who are "lower performers". And it just has a capability of just people being able to do things they just couldn't do before. Not replacing people, but augmenting. And I think that concept can be applied to school, You can apply to medicine, you could apply it to technology applications, those working IT fields, those who are in line of business. And I think we're just beginning to just scratch the surface of our understanding of how this is gonna change things.
0:28:06.7 Srini Koushik: I read that study as well. It was actually pretty cool because something I learned out of that is AI and the use of AI, it probably jeopardizes more of the experts jobs as opposed to the people who are day-to-day average type thing. It actually lifts their productivity up to be able to go drive that. And so I thought that was fascinating because, but if you think more about it, the example, you use this rate, right? In the past 20 years ago when I was a CIO and looking at it, I valued a Cisco network engineer quite a lot, right? So today I can get that knowledge, like AI can actually help me. Cisco has given me the AI that gets me that knowledge, but now I need someone who can actually think across the board and be more generalist to do that. And if you think through that and primary education and secondary education, then college education, that's what we are trying to do. You build up these silos of knowledge and then you go into more specialization to drive this, it will change, I think as AI becomes more and more useful and more prevalent, it's gonna change us and it's gonna change it in exciting ways. Well, I have a 4-year-old granddaughter. Me and my wife have got a bet. I think by the time she gets to college age, there won't be college.
0:29:20.8 Yadin Porter De León: Yeah. It'll be something that we can't even imagine.
0:29:25.5 Srini Koushik: Our version of college at that point in time is gonna be something very, very different than what we're all used to even today. So...
0:29:28.0 Yadin Porter De León: Yeah, and people like will be entrepreneurs, right? In the beginning they'll have an AI assistant, they'll spin up a Python application, they'll run it somewhere in the cloud, they'll start to do proof of work, they'll post it somewhere and all this will be declarative and will only be limited by your imagination, and it won't be the same curriculum coursework produced then you're tested and then if you don't test right and you're not meeting spec, then you'd be reprocessed by going back. All that stuff. The sort of industrial scholastic complex that was created to create factory workers is gonna look completely different. My only concern though is what's the inequitable distribution of the tooling. Who have AI and who won't have AI? And is that gonna create just a massive capabilities gap? Is it gonna create a massive wealth gap or is it gonna reach everyone where they are now and lift everyone up equally? That's the big question mark.
0:30:15.5 Yadin Porter De León: That's where the intersection of AI and sustainability becomes useful, especially the three Es that I talked about. If we factor that in, then you have to kind of make sure that you don't leave anyone behind to be able to bring people in because otherwise yeah, you're right. Who's got access to it and how, again, glass half full, half empty, whichever way you look at it. Today a lot of people don't go to college because there's bias in admissions, there's whatever it is, there's structural biases in being able to afford education, all of that other stuff. Well, what if we didn't have those things, right? What if I didn't have to know a network of people to get into Harvard or any of these Ivy League schools.
0:31:00.2 Yadin Porter De León: Or if Harvard wasn't a relevant brand anymore.
0:31:01.6 Srini Koushik: And if I have that same level of knowledge available to anyone, right? So then the question is what are the barriers? Then they tend to be, do I have access to technology or what am I being taught in my schools that are not being taught somewhere else? Like it starts to change the possibilities of how you can actually go about it. Which is why I think we live in very exciting times. We absolutely have the ability to change the future for the better. And it's critical that as technical leaders, we embrace that and drive that.
0:31:34.0 Yadin Porter De León: Excellent. So I think that's a sort of a great note to transition to sort of my last question, which is what's that call to action to other technology leaders who are just beginning on this journey? And I was just at a great CIO event, tech leaders event. I'm gonna be in another one actually, about the time you listen to this, I'll have been to the one in Barcelona as well and talking to them and they're just at the beginning of the journey. Nobody's like years ahead of this from a technology, from a sustainability standpoint. I think a lot of people are just putting their thoughts into their strategy. Some are ahead, but I think now's a good time to really say what would be your advice to those technology leaders who want to adopt this framework and help their business become a sustainable business in that meaning of the framework.
0:32:16.2 Srini Koushik: Yeah. Well look, I think it's a great question and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend to be an expert. I'll tell you what's influenced me, right? Like one of the...
0:32:24.7 Yadin Porter De León: I'm asking you to change the world right now, Srini, can you just change the world and just give everyone a blueprint to how to do that?
0:32:30.5 Srini Koushik: One of the things that I actually do believe in, and the thing that got me very passionate about sustainability was, it's a simple saying, but I heard the saying that just said like the earth is not something you inherited from your ancestors. It's something you're borrowing from your children.
0:32:47.0 Yadin Porter De León: Yeah. I love that. No, I love that.
0:32:51.9 Srini Koushik: I think that's profound because I think if I'm borrowing from my children like if that's what I'm doing. How do I leave it in a better place? Like if you've got a mortgage, like if you're gonna leave it to your... The houses, how did you pay that down? Right. How did you actually pay it down or pay it off or any of that stuff. So then what it does is like if you believe in that stuff, then it gets to a point where the second thing people have to understand is as a technologist, right? Or anyone as a technologist, do not assume that someone else is gonna solve it. It's gotta be you who's gonna have to start, right? And absolutely one person can make a difference when you externalize it and say Like oh, wait a second, India and China burned more coal than the US does and Israel. It's like nothing you can do to control that, but you can actually control what you do, right? And how you actually do that piece.
0:33:42.1 Yadin Porter De León: Exactly.
0:33:42.2 Srini Koushik: And so it's the same thing that applies to technology leaders. As technologists, we live and operate in an environment that has the ability to impact this in a meaningful way. How you choose the technologies you use, how you consume it, how do you kind of make it available to a broader subset of people so that they can enjoy in the benefits of that technology brings. Those are all things under our control. And I think then you start to see leaders make that change. And clearly in order to make those right decisions, getting educated about a lot of things that are on sustainability. As technologists, we love new tech, anything new comes out, like we're going out and getting certifications and others like that. Sustainability is the latest cool tech. Go understand what goes into creating a gadget you bought. Right? Or...
0:34:27.6 Yadin Porter De León: I love that perspective sustainability is the new cool tech.
0:34:35.0 Srini Koushik: Yeah. It is because I think how cool is it that you can actually go beyond the words that Silicon Valley normally uses and says like we're gonna change the world. Well, here you can actually change the world. Right. When you actually do apply sustainability in that.
0:34:52.4 Yadin Porter De León: We Have another dysfunctional saying, and that's called move fast and break things. And that's not the most sustainable phrase.
0:34:57.5 Srini Koushik: Well we've done that we've done that.
0:35:00.9 Yadin Porter De León: Yes, We've done that.
0:35:01.0 Srini Koushik: So, we've moved fast and we've broken things. But now I think if you think about it from that vantage point, there's a lot more we can do. And then we get to the point where at home every place that you go like our home is run like everything else. Like we don't get plastic bags from the stores anymore, we're carrying our bags, but at the same time, the plastic bag that comes home doesn't ever get thrown away. Nine months ago when I was in California, I went to a Target and picked this thing up, right? This is the Path water bottle. And it's just a regular water bottle. It's a pH balanced water bottle, but in a metal container. And that was... I bought this in January. I'm still carrying it around.
0:35:43.9 Yadin Porter De León: Nice.
0:35:45.1 Srini Koushik: Like oh, I need water. Like I keep... Yeah. And it's like it works.
0:35:48.3 Yadin Porter De León: It's everything we do.
0:35:49.9 Srini Koushik: Yeah. I didn't need to go spend a hundred bucks on name your product and buy another one just to say I am sustainable. Well, I just didn't throw away the aluminum container. And I love the fact that you go through San Francisco, you can't get any more plastic bottles. You can only get those aluminum bottles in the San Francisco airport. Right. It's a good move. Right. But...
0:36:07.1 Yadin Porter De León: It's fabulous.
0:36:07.5 Srini Koushik: I just took it one more step and go like those bottles, like that brand is like it crumbles pretty easily. Even when you're coming down on the plane, the pressure crumbles it. So this one is a little bit more robust. It cost me a couple of bucks, but it's lasted me nine months.
0:36:25.6 Yadin Porter De León: It's fabulous. And we can use that analogy, I think to pretty much anything that we do when we're deploying technology, when we're looking at building strategy.
0:36:30.6 Srini Koushik: Yeah. Just understand what it's being used at.
0:36:31.9 Yadin Porter De León: I like it. Well, Srini, this has been a fabulous conversation. Tell everybody where they can find out more about you, about RackSpace and where they can find you on the internet.
0:36:45.2 Srini Koushik: Well, you can connect with me on LinkedIn Srini Koushik. So you should be able to connect with me there. That's probably the best place to connect with me. If you wanna find out about more of what we're doing with sustainability and AI, you can go to fair.RackSpace.com, which is F-A-I-R, which incidentally stands profoundly For AI by RackSpace. Right. It's what FAIR stands for.
0:37:08.8 Yadin Porter De León: Oh, that's awesome.
0:37:09.8 Srini Koushik: Fair.RackSpace.com.
0:37:09.9 Yadin Porter De León: That's fabulous.
0:37:10.0 Srini Koushik: You'll hear a lot more... Like you can hear a lot more about how we think about responsible AI and others from there, but if I've been able to influence one or two people in thinking about sustainability and thinking about how we use technology, I consider it a win.
0:37:21.8 Yadin Porter De León: Yeah. Well, I'll definitely be saving my water bottles like I've been doing, so I think we're on the same page there. Well, Srini I appreciate you joining the CIO Exchange podcast.
0:37:32.2 Srini Koushik: Yep. Thank you.
0:37:32.3 S3: Thank you for listening to this latest episode. Please consider subscribing to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more insights from technology leaders as well as global research on key topics, visit vmware.com/cio.