GreenPT partners with Open Knowledge Foundation on sustainable AI

Open Knowledge Foundation has spent more than two decades building open data infrastructure. It created and maintains CKAN and Open Data Editor, two officially recognised digital public goods, and works with a distributed network of communities across the public, private and social sectors.

Over the past months, OKFN has been aligning its own tools with the values it advocates. Video conferencing now runs on BigBlueButton, analytics on Plausible, time tracking on Kimai. Each one an open, more ethical alternative to the proprietary tool it replaced.

Then they looked at AI.

What the partnership includes

GreenPT is joining OKFN’s AI Learning Labs, its programme for building AI literacy that is practical, responsible and multilingual, through learning by doing. As part of the partnership, GreenPT provides:

• API credits for OKFN projects
• LLM inference, speech-to-text, RAG and other endpoints
• Access to the GreenPT platform for OKFN staff and the wider network

Why it matters

Much of OKFN’s network works in the Global South, where communities have long faced barriers to accessing AI without surrendering their data to Big Tech. The choice has often been: use AI and hand over your data, or don’t use AI.

This partnership is about a third option. GreenPT runs in European data centres powered by renewable energy, deliberately uses smaller, more efficient models and shows the energy and carbon impact of every prompt. For an organisation that practises openness from its backend infrastructure to the applications it builds, that transparency matters as much as the models themselves.

In OKFN’s own words: “We want open knowledge and sustainable infrastructure to go hand in hand, serving communities without compromising on values, data sovereignty, or the health of our planet.”

What’s next

Over the coming months, we’ll work with OKFN on at least one joint case study based on a real project, combining GreenPT’s technology with OKFN’s expertise and global network. We’ll share what we learn along the way. 💚

• Read OKFN’s announcement
• About AI Learning Labs
• The Tech We Want