SHADE Newsletter 20th March 2025

Welcome to the thirty fourth edition of the SHADE newsletter! 

SHADE is a research hub with a mission to explore issues at the intersection of digital technologies/AI, health and the environment. It is guided by a fundamental question: How should the balance between AI/digital enabled health and planetary health be struck in different areas of the world, and what should be the guiding principles?

The SHADE newsletter comes out every two weeks, taking an in depth look at selected topics, as well as highlighting new resources, events and opportunities in the SHADE space.

In this edition we ask whether AI’s energy consumption could be shrinking, and zoom in on microbial infections, both fungal and bacterial.  We hope you enjoy it!

Please tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you think is missing at [email protected].   

Shrinking AI’s energy consumption?

• From agriculture to healthcare to the environment, TinyML is having a big impact and could pave the way for AI to move out of the data centre, reports Science.

• From Germany, a new AI training method that could significantly reduce energy consumption. This Nature article picks up on neural networks, the type of AI the new training method works on, and its alternative, symbolic AI. It reports on which direction researchers think AI should go in.

• As the FT reports on the increasing use of ‘distillation’ in creating AI models, Forbes describes what distillation will mean for healthcare start ups. Meanwhile this article in Medium gives the lowdown on efficiency and ethical considerations around distillation in AI. It is, however, unclear what the rebound effects of distillation might be, and AI Cosmos also highlights hidden risks behind distilled models.

• Gavin McCormick is the guest on this episode of the Life with Machines podcast. Gavin is co-founder of WattTime and ClimateTrace and believes that AI is going the ‘other way’ in terms of energy consumption.

Fungal and Bacterial Infections

• Foiling the Growing Threat of Fungal Pathogens highlights the multiple ways in which fungal infections threaten human health on a warming plant. The article recommends a One Health approach to fungal disease surveillance.

• This correspondance in Nature highlights the unseen climate health risks of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in urban informal settlements. Noting that climate change contributes to the risk of these settlements ‘becoming global hotspot reservoirs of new multidrug-resistant pathogens’, the article calls for better data on these neglected populations.

• Meanwhile The Guardian reports on a healthcare technology - a rapid DNA sequencing system - that can diagnose bacterial infections much faster and more accurately. This has multiple benefits for the patient and ‘could help turn the tide’ in the fight against AMR.

Resources, Events and Opportunities

• The Lancet Global Health Commission reports on medical oxygen security. The report highlights the scale of the acute medical and surgical oxygen coverage gap in LMICs, and also that investing in medical oxygen could be as cost-effective as routine childhood immunisation. The report notes huge gaps in data on oxygen coverage and proposes new tools to address this. The report’s proposed solutions centre equity and sustainability through practical action: Recommendations include ‘Integrating oxygen investments into national plans’, ‘embracing oxygen systems and devices that are energy-efficient and powered by renewable energy’ as well as ‘investment in local maintenance and repair’ which would reduce the ‘financial, human, and environmental costs of device graveyards’.

• Drawing on lessons from climate change, nuclear safety, and global health governance, this analysis from the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative examines whether, and how, applying the framework of a “public good” could help us better understand and address the challenges posed by advanced AI systems.

• Meanwhile from the Digital Good Research Fund, ‘Building the digital good’: a call for applications. Proposals are invited that build on, engage with, test and challenge the ideas in this discussion paper which includes considerations around digital technologies’ impact on wellbeing, health and the environment. The deadline to apply is 26th June 2025 16:00 UK time. You can sign up to join a Q&A webinar on March 24th at 1.30pm UK time.

• Agile is arguably the most popular software development methodology, and Agile ways of working are built into the UK NHS Service Standard: The latest episode of the GreenIO podcast looks at how environmental sustainability can be introduced into the Agile methodology.

• This blog from Tech Policy Press calls for legally enforced, rather than voluntary, regulation of AI’s sustainability. It summarises the challenges in assessing AI’s environmental impact and unpacks the various categories of rebound effect highlighted in a recent paper from Sasha Luccioni, Emma Strubbel, and Kate Crawford, and featured in a previous edition of this newsletter.

• Material AI and the Mineral Supply Chain - episode 6 of the CodeGreen podcast looks at the environmental and human toll of AI supply chains.

• This report from the World Meterological Organisation (WMO), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) highlights how seasonal forecasts can inform planning of electricity supply and demand, how this is vital to meet targets to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030, and how it enables better preparation for extreme weather events.

• This Nature Comment article proposes climate finance clubs in HICS to finance decarbonisation plans from LMICs. Crunching the data for an example case, the article highlights that this is not foreign aid but rather a ‘a high-return investment in global economic stability and climate security for the benefit of all’.

• The DHIS2 Annual Conference is happening in Oslo from June 10th to June 13th. Find out more and register for in person or virtual attendance.

And finally, this book review from Nature discusses techno-optimism, the rebound effect and whether a climate of truth can solve the polycrisis in the Anthropocene.

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