Grant Application for Climate Change AI 2024

[adityamanglik]

Issue to track the grant application for Climate Change AI 2024.
Grant URL: https://www.climatechange.ai/calls/innovation_grants_2024#application-instructions

[adityamanglik]

Grant Proposal Draft

This is an open source project collaboration. The open source nature of this project is exemplified in open sourcing the hardware and software configuration, testing and workload source code, etc.

Problems targeted by the project

• Difficult to accurately determine carbon emissions of AI due to lack of a standardized platform and process for quantifying the values
• The severe lack of energy data for comparing emissions across generations of AI models and underlying hardware

Goals

• Build a platform to precisely and accurately determine carbon emissions of AI workloads and other software
• Standardize the process and establish consensus for the hardware, software and process specifications
• Develop a centralized method to collect data from the platform
• Clean, polish and release the dataset for public domain.

Result

If funded, the project will:

• Deliver a public domain dataset of energy and carbon values for different AI and ML workloads
• Enable applications of AI and ML to optimize the carbon emissions from different workloads.

[adityamanglik]

Questions for 04.09.2024 meeting

1. What is your goal for this grant?
   GSF has already developed ISO standards in its frameworks. This work is an extension on top:

• SCER Lab specification and implementation
• Push specification to International ISO Standard

3. Regarding the funding:
   a) How do you envision the grant money being used if we're successful?

   • All proceeds go to University. Columbia MUST become a permanent member of GSF.

   b) Is there potential for GSF to provide any additional funding or resources?

   • Once the project is established within GSF, it will have resources from GSF allocated and dedicated.

   c) Would any portion of the grant be allocated to GSF?

   • No.

4. Who from GSF would be involved in this project?

• Chris Xie (Futurewei), Sean McIlroy (Green Software Foundation).
• All GSF members are open to participation, including Google, Microsoft, UBS, et al.

5. Are there any companies or external partners interested in or potentially involved with this project?

• All members of Green Software Foundation collaborate on the deliverables.

[adityamanglik]

• Grant Proposal Structure:

  • Max 12 pages (excl. references)
  • 12pt font, single-spaced, 1-inch margins
  • Key sections: Project title, Summary, Project Outline, Deliverables, Timeline, Team, Pathway to Impact, Dataset Plan, Equity Considerations, Ethical Considerations

• Focus: AI and climate change intersection

• Main Objectives:

  • Address data/infrastructure gaps
  • Improve knowledge transfer between fields/sectors

• Required Outcomes:

  • Publish FAIR-compliant dataset/simulator
  • Deployed project, scientific publications, or public dissemination
  • Open-source all grant IP

• Special Track on Dataset Gaps:

  • Primary focus on creating datasets/simulators
  • AI/ML use not required, but should enable future AI/ML work

• Pathway to Impact:

  • Concrete plan for practical implementation/deployment
  • Address climate mitigation/adaptation

• Budget:

  • Itemized budget with justification (max 2 pages)
  • 10% maximum institutional overhead

[adityamanglik]

Initial draft of specification: https://github.com/adityamanglik/scer/blob/Dev/GSCL/Initial%20Draft.md

Discussion for GSCL:

1. Should we define a universal hardware baseline, or allow for flexibility based on regional or organizational resources?

2. How can we incentivize major LLM providers to contribute their internal workflows to an open-source standard?

3. What conformance programs or validation processes should be put in place to maintain the integrity of the certification?

4. What role should community-driven initiatives, like crowd-sourced testing, play in the GSCL ecosystem?

[adityamanglik]

Understand implications of choosing ETH or Columbia. This decides how the money moves and where it goes.

[adityamanglik]

Find Prof availability
Confirm GSF application from Columbia's perspective

[NAMRATA-WOKE]

@seanmcilroy29 did we submit something?

[seanmcilroy29]

@seanmcilroy29 did we submit something?

@NAMRATA-WOKE - Nothing has been submitted yet