Event Description
Join the Collaborative for the Earth, the Department of Political Science, and the AI Innovation Institute as we welcome Lav Varshney, Ph.D., Della Pietra Infinity Professor and Inaugural Director of the AI Innovation Institute.
The Physical Economy of Intelligence: Marketcraft, Data Centers, and Climate
Artificial intelligence is often described as immaterial, yet it is a rapidly growing physical industry built from memory chips, servers, concrete, land, electricity, water, and capital. This talk develops a marketcraft perspective on AI and climate, treating memory, compute, and intelligence as interdependent goods shaped by supply constraints, demand shocks, long investment cycles, environmental externalities, and the design of markets and institutions. This framing helps explain why sustainable AI cannot be achieved through more efficient algorithms alone: it also requires better lifecycle accounting, procurement standards, flexible computing, and contracts that shift computational activity toward environmentally favorable times and places. The talk will connect these system-level ideas to work on generative design and experimental validation of low-carbon concrete for data-center construction, as well as AI-enabled optimization of wastewater operations that have each reduced energy/carbon by 30 percent or more. Together, these examples show how the co-design of algorithms, physical infrastructure, markets, and public policy can reduce AI's environmental footprint while using AI to accelerate climate solutions.
Date & Time: Wednesday, September 23, 2026 | 12:30 PM - 1:50 PM
Location: Laufer Center
Registration is compulsory
For any questions and accessibility requests or accommodations, please contact Jennifer Gilday at c4e@stonybrook.edu or call 631-632-4625.
