A short talk at DxD25, the first annual conference of London South Bank University’s Digital x Data Research Centre (3 and 4 July 2025), which brought different disciplines together on the theme of infrastructure. I spoke in the Friday afternoon session “Reimagining AI and IT for Sustainable Infrastructure”, convened by Kasra Kassai, alongside Astrid Wynne (Techbuyer Europe) on designing out waste in IT systems. Astrid had chaired my Data Centre World panel in March, where Professor Deborah Andrews of LSBU was also on the panel.
There is more than one way to architect AI, and despite what some very large players in the tech industry would have you believe, brute force isn’t the only answer. The talk called on the UK and Europe to use their constraints to push for more responsible AI innovation, hosting AI with a lower impact and even with energy re-use benefits. That means moving beyond groupthink to a diverse range of AI architectures that suit each use case and its specifics, such as data privacy and sovereignty, with decentralised edge architectures used alongside centralised ones as the key to pragmatic AI infrastructure.
