Why Sustainability Is Now A Byproduct Of Technology, Not The Other Way Round
The Future We Build, A Brave Ideas network affiliated show featuring Alex Edds
In this episode of The Future We Build, host Alex Edds sits down with Antony Slumbers in this second of a two-part conversation.
The Future We Build - Season 1, Episode 10
Recorded before the recent stock market turbulence that he references mid-episode
This episode is the 2nd of a two-part conversation.
Part Two picks up where Alex & Antony left off, and looks ahead into:
The future of AI hardware, the geopolitics of energy, the sustainability implications of large language models, and what it will actually take for real estate businesses to transform rather than just tinker.
Key Timestamps
[00:41:00] The exponential efficiency curve —why the cost of a given level of AI intelligence has fallen 10x per year for the last three to four years
[00:42:00] Right-sizing AI models — why state-of-the-art frontier models are already overkill for most real estate tasks, and what that means for cost
[00:43:00] The Apple business model for AI — how open source models will converge with on-device computing to shift processing away from data centres
[00:45:00] Data centre energy and the 3% myth —why the macro figure is less alarming than the localised grid constraints in Virginia and across the US
[00:47:00] AI optimisation of the built environment — why DeepMind cut Google's data centre energy use by 40%, and why most buildings leave 10–20% on the table
[00:51:00] Materials science as the next frontier — DeepMind's investment in low-cost sustainable materials and the question of when solar glazing becomes viable at scale
[00:54:00] Europe's innovation deficit — why high energy prices create demand but regulatory instinct stifles supply, and the poor storytelling around net zero
[00:58:00] Sustainability as a by product of technical buildings — Antony's argument that a fully sensored, efficient building is already most of the way to sustainable
[00:59:00] Institutional mandates haven't changed — European investors still require sustainable assets, they just stopped saying ESG out loud
[01:01:00] The hospitality niche — real estate assets designed for digital detox, 'human as the new luxury', and the demand side that might pull sustainable development forward[01:04:00] How to eat the sustainability elephant — Antony's argument for ignoring what you can't move and doing what you can within your own patch
[01:07:00] The competitive threat to incumbents — how well-funded spinouts with domain expertise and AI-first architecture could undercut established firms on margin
[01:09:00] Alex on building a sustainability due diligence tool in three evenings using Claude Code — and the question of what actually creates defensible value
[01:11:00] The three components of real AI value — data access, orchestration across systems, and trust; why software is the easiest part
[01:15:00] Hallucination and the trust problem — why even cited, credible-looking sources can be entirely fabricated, and why domain knowledge is the verification layer
[01:16:00] The CRE Automation Matrix — Antony's four-quadrant framework for deciding which real estate tasks to automate: plumbing vs cognition, easy vs hard to verify
[01:19:00] Making sustainability economically viable for the whole market — how AI could bring the cost of high-quality analysis down from Blackstone-level to mid-market
[01:20:00] Closing question: What one thing would Antony want changed?
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