New section Objectif Métropoles "Towards a more circular AI: solutions for Territories"

He dismantles the illusions maintained around Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), this supposed super-brain capable of doing everything better than humans. For him, this fantasy is less a matter of science than of marketing storytelling. AGI is God, he jokes. And while some dream of thinking machines, let us not forget that current generative AI is above all a sink for water, electricity, and natural resources. Up to three bottles of water to generate one hundred words. But it is not AI itself that is at issue. It is the use we make of it. Inference—the simple act of generating answers—sometimes costs more than training the models. And in many cases, classic AI or low-consumption expert systems would be more than sufficient. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has himself acknowledged the environmental and financial impact of interactions with AI, even for seemingly simple answers, stating that polite phrases such as thank you or please cost the company tens of millions of dollars in additional computing power and electricity. We verge on the absurd when politeness becomes a measurable energy cost. For Luc Julia, the future lies elsewhere: in the multiplication of small, ultra-specialised models, designed for useful, local, and frugal tasks. Models that France and Europe are well placed to develop, provided they focus on accuracy rather than brute force.

Less latency, less energy, more local control. An embedded AI, optimized for contextual processing, marking a salutary break with the voracious model of universal generative AI. It is in this direction that a digital intelligence compatible with planetary limits is being invented. Faced with these observations, local authorities have a decisive role to play. They can, starting now, activate several levers to rationalize and circularize AI usage. Such as promoting the circular economy of digital technology by reconditioning, repairing, or sharing their IT equipment. They can also support the emergence of low-impact local data centers, powered by renewable energies and integrated into urban planning. Furthermore, local authorities have a role to play in education: elected officials, agents, and residents must be made aware of the environmental impact of digital usage.

Increasingly complex, the sector requires dynamic trade-offs based on a multiplicity of factors (local resources, regulations, price volatility). AIoT – artificial intelligence coupled with connected objects – now enables the optimization of the production/consumption/storage triptych at the scale of a neighborhood, a building, or a territory. Thanks to advanced algorithms, AI can help model sustainable energy choices during the design phase or even adapt consumption to available resources, integrating local constraints. It is another way of conceiving territorial planning: more agile, more contextualized, more resilient.

This company develops complex optimisation algorithms—simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, neural networks—to finely manage the production, storage, and consumption of energy. On the Paris Batignolles project, EMBIX worked on energy trade-offs between local geothermal energy and the urban heating network. At Lyon Sollys, it contributed to modelling the balance between biogas cogeneration and the existing network. It also supports the landlord Polylogis in photovoltaic projects following a logic of intelligent resource valorisation. All these cases demonstrate that a well-designed and well-targeted AI makes it possible to save resources instead of wasting them.

Local authorities, as grassroots actors, can and must be the pioneers. The choice before us is not between AI and sobriety. It is that of a useful, reasoned, territorial intelligence. And why not, a French-style AI: sober, elegant, efficient.