Two minutes into his TedX talk on AI and the environment, Tejas Chopra notes that training a single large language model releases roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere as 125 roundtrip flights from New York to Beijing.
In keeping with his ever-practical approach, Chopra goes on to suggest several concrete ways to reduce AI’s carbon footprint by optimizing resource use, energy consumption, and AI decision-making across industries.
An accomplished engineer specializing in storage systems, cloud infrastructure, and machine learning platforms, Chopra is not content to simply contribute technology solutions to the world; he also works to further the sustainability of computing both in the physical environment and in the talent that fuels the field.
To the latter end, Chopra co-founded GoEB1—now EnsolAI—a platform aimed at helping U.S. immigrants working in technology to find opportunities to build their brand and their impact.
Currently a senior software engineer at Netflix, Chopra is also one of Computing’s Top 30 Early Career Professionals. In the following Q&A, Chopra describes
The hybrid storage solutions he created at Netflix to manage exabyte-scale data—while also saving tens of millions of dollars in storage costs quarterly—and how these solutions streamlined collaboration in the Netflix content production pipeline
How highlighting the successful alignment of technical innovation and environmental responsibility can inspire a new generation to view environmental impact as a fundamental design constraint
The key lessons he has learned in his career thus far, and how those lessons have influenced his approach to innovation and his leadership style
How the Netflix Drive’s innovative architecture bridges the gap between traditional file system semantics and the economies of scale provided by cloud object storage
... continue reading