Stanford MLSys Seminar Episode 52: Bilge Acun [Th, 1.35-2.30pm PT]

[Karan Goel]

Hi everyone,

We're back with the fifty-second episode of the MLSys Seminar on Thursday from 1.35-2.30pm PT. 

We'll be joined by Bilge Acun, who will talk about building datacenters using AI. The format is a 30 minute talk followed by a 30 minute podcast-style discussion, where the live audience can ask questions.

Livestream Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPrFL2gWmTY

Guests: Bilge Acun

Title: Designing Sustainable Datacenters with and for AI

Abstract: Machine learning has witnessed exponential growth over the recent years. In this talk, we will first explore the environmental implications of the super-linear growth trend of AI from a holistic perspective, spanning data, algorithms, and system hardware. System efficiency optimizations can significantly help reducing the carbon footprint of AI systems. However, predictions show that the efficiency improvements will not be enough to reduce the overall resource needs of AI as Jevon's Paradox suggests "efficiency increases consumption". Therefore, we need to design our datacenters with sustainability in mind, using renewable energy every hour of every day. Relying on wind and solar energy 24/7 is challenging due to their intermittent nature. To cope with the fluctuations of renewable energy generation, multiple solutions can be applied such as energy storage and carbon aware scheduling for the workloads. In this talk, I will introduce a framework to analyze the multi-dimensional solution space by taking into account the operational and embodided footprint of the solutions and further how AI can be a part of the solution.
Bio: Bilge Acun is a Research Scientist at Meta AI (/FAIR). Her research lies in the intersection of energy efficient and sustainable system design and machine learning. Her work at Meta included making large scale machine learning systems more efficient through algorithmic and system optimizations. She received her Ph.D. degree in 2017 at the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation was awarded 2018 ACM SigHPC Dissertation Award Honorable Mention. Before joining FAIR, she worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member.

See you all there!

Best,

Karan

[Karan Goel]

Reminder: we're starting in 15 minutes!