AI-free solution to data reporting challenge wins Green Award
Luuk Ekkelenkamp, Leroy Vlug and their fellow ICT students were recently honoured with a Green Award for the AI-free solution they devised to address a complex real-world data reporting challenge. While it might have seemed obvious to employ AI for the assignment set by cloud services provider Intercept, Luuk and Leroy explain that they deliberately chose not to. Are we perhaps too quick to turn to AI to solve our problems?
Luuk and Leroy, aged 19 and 20 respectively, are following the same track within their ICT degree: Software Engineering(opens in new tab). Both were introduced to computer science and programming during the havo and now feel entirely at home in their programme. The assignment they completed with four fellow students for Intercept’s cloud specialists, proved quite demanding. In the end, the students opted to develop their own algorithms and implement them in C#.
What did your assignment involve?
Luuk: “As a group of six students, we were paired with Intercept, specialists in cloud management. Intercept manages cloud environments for over seventy clients, and their staff use Azure to produce reports for those clients containing information, recommendations, and advice on security, accessibility, cost management, and so on. Much of this work is done manually: employees compile the data into Word documents which are then sent to clients. It is a time-consuming process. Our supervisor at Intercept asked us to consider how this process might be automated to save the company time. We took on that challenge.”
How did you approach such a challenge?
Leroy: “We were fortunate that Intercept gave us considerable freedom to determine our own approach. We were able to conduct our own research and make our own decisions. Intercept initially assumed that an AI-driven solution would be the logical route, but they were equally open to alternative or hybrid approaches. We began with a thorough analysis of the problem and concluded that, while AI offered possibilities, it was not strictly necessary. In fact, we found that using AI would not only be time-consuming but also expensive, given the vast volume of data the company processes each month for so many clients. We therefore opted for a more economical and energy-efficient alternative: programming our own algorithms in C#.”
Had you already learned this during your studies?
Luuk: “Yes, we had just completed a module covering the basics of algorithms, so that proved very useful. The programme gives us a broad foundation, meaning that when faced with a challenge we quickly have an idea of which direction to explore. That was certainly needed in this case. One of the main difficulties was dividing the work among six people, which can be challenging in programming projects. In the end, it worked out well, although towards the final stage the real task was integrating all the separate components into a coherent and functional end product. We had to work very hard right up to the final week to meet the deadline. We then presented our work at Winnovation, where members of the Green Award jury noticed us. The Green Award is an sustainability prize at Windesheim. After that, we presented our product to Intercept.”
How did your client respond?
Leroy: “Positively and enthusiastically. I believe we have developed a practical and sustainable solution to the problem of how companies can prevent employees from spending unnecessary time and effort on data reporting. With our program, the entire process can be fully automated. Whether Intercept will use our solution exactly as we designed it remains to be seen, but we are curious to find out.”
Does your approach suggest that AI is being used too readily?
Leroy: “Yes, I think it does. AI consumes a great deal of energy. I recently read that even the simple habit of people thanking ChatGPT results in significant energy use and costs tens of millions of dollars annually. In our specific case, we discovered that using AI would not only be very time-consuming, as you would need to generate a separate report for each company. But it's also very costly, since this kind of data processing cannot be done with free tools.”
Luuk: “I get the impression that companies nowadays try to incorporate AI into everything because they believe it enhances their image. I think we should reserve AI for more serious challenges. It is here to stay, but I hope we will learn to use it more consciously and carefully. Writing our own algorithms is a good example of a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative for solving such problems programmatically.”