The One About Sustainable AI

Discover how AI moves from proof-of-concept to production-ready solutions tackling real-world challenges in this compelling triple-header session. Zuno Carbon reveals the hard-won lessons of deploying emission factor matching at scale, complete with monitoring systems that keep models honest when theory meets messy reality. GUILD Asia's founder takes you from seagrass conservation to inclusive gaming for cerebral palsy patients, demonstrating how AI can serve stewardship over mere efficiency. Meanwhile, Singapore-ETH Centre showcases cutting-edge human-centred urban informatics that's reshaping sustainable city planning by putting people first in data collection and modelling, offering practical insights for anyone building AI that serves both performance and purpose. More About the Sharings Khairul Nazran Kamarulnizam (Lead Software Engineer) and Tammy Lee (Junior Data Scientist) from Zuno Carbon will be sharing about "Overwatching Our AI: Building and Monitoring AI Product Performances" The barrier to build ‘intelligent’ products with AI has come down in recent years with better models, better primitives and frameworks, and abundance of resources. However, building something as a proof of concept or small project is different than building for real use case where there are multiple other factors affecting inference results.In this talk, we will explore how Zuno Carbon built their emission factor matching services and set up the monitoring of their model performance with a feedback loop system. (Technical Level 200) Md. Ibnur Rashad (Founder & CEO, GUILD Asia) will be sharing about "From Ocean Roots to Cerebral Pathways: An AI Innovator's Journey from Efficiency to Stewardship". Ibnur explores how AI can move beyond efficiency toward stewardship of ecosystems, inclusion, and security. Through 3 of his case studies: - Seagrass conservation using analytical AI, - Inclusive game design for persons with cerebral palsy using embodied AI,- Climate resilience using generative AI,Ibnur shows how different AI paradigms can address real-world sustainability challenges. With technical demonstrations, Ibnur argues for designing AI systems that prioritise ecological integrity, human dignity, and systemic resilience, by asking: what are we truly choosing to sustain with AI? (Technical Level 200) Dr Matias Quintana (Postdoctoral Researcher and Module Coordinator, Singapore-ETH Centre) will be sharing on "It's not you, it's me: Demographic differences in human-centric urban analytics" Dr Matias will show recent research efforts on urban informatics, with a particular emphasis on human-centered methodologies and datasets, at the Future Cities Lab in the Singapore-ETH Centre. The work focuses on data collection and modeling at scale to challenge traditional AI approaches and provide deeper insights and analytics. In addition to contributing to open datasets, this work proposes new measures to introduce a human perspective in assessing and supporting urban sustainability. (Technical Level 300) More About the Speakers Khairul Nazran Kamarulnizam is the Lead Software Engineer of Zuno Carbon and one of the rarer extroverted software engineers. A retired serial hackathoner now hoping to transform creative hacks and POCs into the lovable and delightful products. Tammy Lee is the junior data scientist of Zuno Carbon where she is building AI products to solve various pain points in the realm of sustainability. Md. Ibnur Rashad is the Founder & CEO of GUILD Asia. Having worked in a tech startup in Silicon Valley and innovation teams in the Government, Ibnur brings planetary foresight, human-centered design and business innovation to help impact startups like Commenhers and organisations like L'Oréal reinvent and thrive in times of turbulence. At GUILD Asia, he spearheads sustainability inventions such as the iBam bamboo amplifier and the Floating Chinampa modular farms which have been featured by BBC and CNA, and have won awards and reached international markets. He is also the Founding Partner at FiveSights, a strategic consulting firm. Dr Matias Quintana is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Module Coordinator at the Singapore-ETH Centre. He holds an MSc from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD from the National University of Singapore. Matias' research converges urban data science, human-building interaction, and building energy analytics to support bidirectional digital twins and data-driven urban planning. He has experience working in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and delivered talks at universities and organisations worldwide, including Peking, Tsinghua, and ETH Zürich. More About the Series ​AI Wednesdays is Lorong AI’s weekly gathering, bringing together practitioners, researchers and innovators for technical discussions on research insights, product development and engineering practices. ​Get involved: Learn more about Lorong AI | Speaker Sign-up | WhatsApp Community | LinkedIn | X