We’re back, with a one-off episode looking at the challenges and opportunities tckled by leaders in their field throughout 2024, and looking ahead to 2025. 2024 has been quite a year. From elections and changes of Government around the world, to war, to lingering economic uncertainty - it has felt like the world is in a state of flux. But with uncertainty comes opportunity. Opportunities to find new competitive advantages. Opportunities to do things better this time around... And opportunities to make the most of the incredible pace of technological change bubbling under the surface. For HPE President and Chief Executive Officer Antonio Neri, 2024 was the year in which plans were consolidated to feed the ever-growing generative AI market. Whilst the last few years have been about providing the computing power to drive generative AI, it’s now time to look to other pieces of the puzzle - in particular networking and cooling, to ensure that training and inference are not only done quickly and without bottlenecks, but efficiently and sustainably too. AI has also been on the mind for Cathy Li, the head of AI, Data and the Metaverse at the World Economic Forum. Cathy’s focus for the last year - and into 2025 - has been on working towards global consensus on AI, including worldwide standards and regulations which mean that the entire world has access to AI’s potential, but also so that AI providers can tap into opportunities worldwide. That could mean seeking out more sustainable energy solutions or better infrastructure, without having to worry so much about local AI regulations. Meanwhile, over in the world of motorsport, the race to stay competitive is never ending, and with development on a new generation of cars starting in early 2025. That’s top of mind for George Russell, a driver with the Mercedes AMG-PETRONAS Formula 1 team. He joins us to talk through what it means to stay competitive when success or failure hangs on tenths of a second. Sources quotes in this episode: AI Market size predictions: https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1474143/global-ai-market-size#:~:text=The%20market%20for%20artificial%20intelligence,billion%20U.S.%20dollars%20in%202030.World Economic Forum statistics on data centre energy use: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/11/europe-data-centre-plus-other-technology-news-to-know/

We’ve spoken before on this podcast about cyber security and protecting yourself from cyber crime - but what is being done to tackle the phenomenon internationally? That’s what we’re looking at in this episode. We’ve bought together some of the most senior global figures on cyber crime to find out how international collaboration and public/private partnership is taking the fight to the criminals. It’s a big task. It is predicted that cybercrime will cost the global economy over 9.2 trillion dollars in 2024. The number of firms targeted by ransomware attacks has increased by almost 20% in the last five years, with 72% of organisations being hit in 2023. Deepak Verma is Head of Product for HPE Data Protection. He says it’s not just the big financial players who are being targeted; in fact education and healthcare are the main victims of cyber attacks. Because cyber criminals don’t have to contend with geographical borders, attacks can be instigated from anywhere, to target anywhere. Which is why, as Joanna Bouckaert, from the Centre for Cybersecurity of the World Economic Forum says, bringing governments and organisations together from across the world is imperative to protecting ourselves from the growing complexity of cyber attacks; as is increasing awareness within the private sector. But there’s more to reducing the number of cyber attacks than prevention alone. Craig Jones is a law enforcement official working for Interpol as Director of Cybercrime. He says building a network of co-operation with different countries has been a key part of bringing down gangs of cyber criminals across the world. Sources and statistics cited in this episode:Cybercrime global cost - https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1280009/cost-cybercrime-worldwide20th anniversary of the Budapest Convention - https://www.coe.int/en/web/cybercrime/20th-anniversary-budapest-conventionBank thwarting billions of pounds worth of cyber attacks - https://www.ft.com/content/cd287352-cb3b-48d8-a85b-668713b80962Schools hit by cyber attacks - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2022/educational-institutions-findings-annex-cyber-security-breaches-survey-2022Stuxnet malware - https://www.cfr.org/cyber-operations/stuxnetNIS2 Directive - https://www.nis-2-directive.com/#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20NIS%202,cybersecurity%20across%20the%20European%20Union.Cyber security spending prediction - https://www.statista.com/outlook/tmo/cybersecurity/worldwide#:~:text=Revenue%20in%20the%20Cybersecurity%20market,US%2492.91bn%20in%202024.HPE logs 2.6 billion events every day - https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/blog-post/2023/04/hpe-showcases-data-security-initiatives-via-the-2023-cybersecurity-report.html

In this episode we are looking at the challenges AI technology faces when it comes to becoming, and then remaining sustainable.The benefits of AI are unquestionable: from improved medical assistance and increased efficiency in the workplace, to autonomous transportation and next-level gaming experiences. But the more expansive the abilities of AI become, the more data storage that’s required. That data storage uses a lot of energy. In fact, it has been predicted that AI servers could be using more energy than a country the size of the Netherlands by 2030. For HPE Chief Technologist, Matt Armstrong-Barnes, the rate at which AI has grown in recent years has had an environmental impact, and he believes that’s down to people rushing into training large language models without thinking about longevity, or the need for future change. And that, in turn, has led to data being stored that is no longer needed. The sustainability issue is something that is also a main focus of Arti Garg, Lead Sustainability & Edge Architect in the office of the CTO at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Like Matt, Arti has kept a keen eye on the exponential growth of AI data storage and the effect that is having on the environment, and agrees that the key to a more sustainable future is in how we train models. However, whilst training models well is important, the tech itself is a key component in more efficient AI. Shar Narasimhan is the director of product marketing for NVIDIA's data center GPU portfolio. He believes that a combination of openly available model optimisations and chipsets, CPUs, GPUs and intelligent data centers optimised for AI is a key piece of the puzzle in avoiding energy wastage, and making AI more sustainable all round. Sources and statistics cited in this episode:Global AI market prediction - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1365145/artificial-intelligence-market-size/#:~:text=Global%20artificial%20intelligence%20market%20size%202021%2D2030&text=According%20to%20Next%20Move%20Strategy,nearly%20two%20trillion%20U.S.%20dollars.AI could use as much energy as a small country report - https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00365-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2542435123003653%3Fshowall%3DtrueIndustry responsible for 14% of earth’s emissions - https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JICES-11-2021-0106/full/htmlNumber of AI startups - https://tracxn.com/d/explore/artificial-intelligence-startups-in-united-states/__8hhT66RA16YeZhW3QByF6cGkAjrM6ertfKJuKbQIiJg/companiesAI model energy use increase - https://openai.com/research/ai-and-computeEuropean Parliament report into AI energy usage - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/662906/IPOL_STU(2021)662906_EN.pdf