carbon footprint
The Hidden AI Race: Tracking Environmental Costs of Innovation
Agarwal, Shyam, Chakraborti, Mahasweta
The past decade has seen a massive rise in the popularity of AI systems, mainly owing to the developments in Gen AI, which has revolutionized numerous industries and applications. However, this progress comes at a considerable cost to the environment as training and deploying these models consume significant computational resources and energy and are responsible for large carbon footprints in the atmosphere. In this paper, we study the amount of carbon dioxide released by models across different domains over varying time periods. By examining parameters such as model size, repository activity (e.g., commits and repository age), task type, and organizational affiliation, we identify key factors influencing the environmental impact of AI development. Our findings reveal that model size and versioning frequency are strongly correlated with higher emissions, while domain-specific trends show that NLP models tend to have lower carbon footprints compared to audio-based systems. Organizational context also plays a significant role, with university-driven projects exhibiting the highest emissions, followed by non-profits and companies, while community-driven projects show a reduction in emissions. These results highlight the critical need for green AI practices, including the adoption of energy-efficient architectures, optimizing development workflows, and leveraging renewable energy sources. We also discuss a few practices that can lead to a more sustainable future with AI, and we end this paper with some future research directions that could be motivated by our work. This work not only provides actionable insights to mitigate the environmental impact of AI but also poses new research questions for the community to explore. By emphasizing the interplay between sustainability and innovation, our study aims to guide future efforts toward building a more ecologically responsible AI ecosystem.
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- Energy > Power Industry (0.46)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Vision (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Natural Language > Large Language Model (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Issues > Social & Ethical Issues (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Neural Networks > Deep Learning (0.68)
How Do Companies Manage the Environmental Sustainability of AI? An Interview Study About Green AI Efforts and Regulations
Sampatsing, Ashmita, Vos, Sophie, Beauxis-Aussalet, Emma, Bogner, Justus
With the ever-growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), AI-based software and its negative impact on the environment are no longer negligible, and studying and mitigating this impact has become a critical area of research. However, it is currently unclear which role environmental sustainability plays during AI adoption in industry and how AI regulations influence Green AI practices and decision-making in industry. We therefore aim to investigate the Green AI perception and management of industry practitioners. To this end, we conducted a total of 11 interviews with participants from 10 different organizations that adopted AI-based software. The interviews explored three main themes: AI adoption, current efforts in mitigating the negative environmental impact of AI, and the influence of the EU AI Act and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Our findings indicate that 9 of 11 participants prioritized business efficiency during AI adoption, with minimal consideration of environmental sustainability. Monitoring and mitigation of AI's environmental impact were very limited. Only one participant monitored negative environmental effects. Regarding applied mitigation practices, six participants reported no actions, with the others sporadically mentioning techniques like prompt engineering, relying on smaller models, or not overusing AI. Awareness and compliance with the EU AI Act are low, with only one participant reporting on its influence, while the CSRD drove sustainability reporting efforts primarily in larger companies. All in all, our findings reflect a lack of urgency and priority for sustainable AI among these companies. We suggest that current regulations are not very effective, which has implications for policymakers. Additionally, there is a need to raise industry awareness, but also to provide user-friendly techniques and tools for Green AI practices.
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- Research Report > New Finding (0.86)
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- Government (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Natural Language > Large Language Model (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Natural Language > Chatbot (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Neural Networks > Deep Learning (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Issues > Social & Ethical Issues (1.00)
SustainDC: Benchmarking for Sustainable Data Center Control Supplementary Information
E-14 F Reward Evaluation and Customization F-19 F.1 Load Shifting Penalty ( LS F-19 F.2 Default Reward Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-19 F.3 Customization of Reward Formulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Workload - The current workload level, which includes both flexible and non-flexible components. The data center modeled is illustrated in Figure 1. The hot air exits the cabinets and returns to the CRAH via the ceiling.
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- Energy > Energy Storage (0.93)
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The Carbon Footprint Wizard: A Knowledge-Augmented AI Interface for Streamlining Food Carbon Footprint Analysis
Aslan, Mustafa Kaan, Heijungs, Reinout, Ilievski, Filip
Environmental sustainability, particularly in relation to climate change, is a key concern for consumers, producers, and policymakers. The carbon footprint, based on greenhouse gas emissions, is a standard metric for quantifying the contribution to climate change of activities and is often assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA). However, conducting LCA is complex due to opaque and global supply chains, as well as fragmented data. This paper presents a methodology that combines advances in LCA and publicly available databases with knowledge-augmented AI techniques, including retrieval-augmented generation, to estimate cradle-to-gate carbon footprints of food products. Our methodology is implemented as a chatbot interface that allows users to interactively explore the carbon impact of composite meals and relate the results to familiar activities.
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Analysing Environmental Efficiency in AI for X-Ray Diagnosis
The integration of AI tools into medical applications has aimed to improve the efficiency of diagnosis. The emergence of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT and Claude, has expanded this integration even further. Because of LLM versatility and ease of use through APIs, these larger models are often utilised even though smaller, custom models can be used instead. In this paper, LLMs and small discriminative models are integrated into a Mendix application to detect Covid-19 in chest X-rays. These discriminative models are also used to provide knowledge bases for LLMs to improve accuracy. This provides a benchmark study of 14 different model configurations for comparison of accuracy and environmental impact. The findings indicated that while smaller models reduced the carbon footprint of the application, the output was biased towards a positive diagnosis and the output probabilities were lacking confidence. Meanwhile, restricting LLMs to only give probabilistic output caused poor performance in both accuracy and carbon footprint, demonstrating the risk of using LLMs as a universal AI solution. While using the smaller LLM GPT-4.1-Nano reduced the carbon footprint by 94.2% compared to the larger models, this was still disproportionate to the discriminative models; the most efficient solution was the Covid-Net model. Although it had a larger carbon footprint than other small models, its carbon footprint was 99.9% less than when using GPT-4.5-Preview, whilst achieving an accuracy of 95.5%, the highest of all models examined. This paper contributes to knowledge by comparing generative and discriminative models in Covid-19 detection as well as highlighting the environmental risk of using generative tools for classification tasks.
- Health & Medicine > Therapeutic Area > Infections and Infectious Diseases (1.00)
- Health & Medicine > Therapeutic Area > Immunology (1.00)
- Health & Medicine > Diagnostic Medicine > Imaging (1.00)
Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead.
Look at the big picture instead. Why focusing on the energy system and large companies is more important than policing individual behavior. Picture it: I'm minding my business at a party, parked by the snack table (of course). A friend of a friend wanders up, and we strike up a conversation. It quickly turns to work, and upon learning that I'm a climate technology reporter, my new acquaintance says something like: "Should I be using AI? I've heard it's awful for the environment." We did the math on AI's energy footprint.
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- Energy > Power Industry (0.30)
The world's largest plane will transport wind turbines blades and fighter jets
The world's largest plane will transport wind turbines blades and fighter jets When completed, the WindRunner will stretch the length of a football field. Rendering of what unloading blades in the desert could look like. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A little-known company based in Boulder, Colorado, is pursuing an ambitious, borderline outlandish goal: creating the world's largest airplane. When completed, the incredibly long 108-meter plane (roughly the length of an NFL football field) is expected to have a wingspan of over 260 feet and could offer 12 times the cargo space of Boeing C-17 Globemaster III .
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Position: The Current AI Conference Model is Unsustainable! Diagnosing the Crisis of Centralized AI Conference
Chen, Nuo, Duan, Moming, Lin, Andre Huikai, Wang, Qian, Wu, Jiaying, He, Bingsheng
Artificial Intelligence (AI) conferences are essential for advancing research, sharing knowledge, and fostering academic community. However, their rapid expansion has rendered the centralized conference model increasingly unsustainable. This paper offers a data-driven diagnosis of a structural crisis that threatens the foundational goals of scientific dissemination, equity, and community well-being. We identify four key areas of strain: (1) scientifically, with per-author publication rates more than doubling over the past decade to over 4.5 papers annually; (2) environmentally, with the carbon footprint of a single conference exceeding the daily emissions of its host city; (3) psychologically, with 71% of online community discourse reflecting negative sentiment and 35% referencing mental health concerns; and (4) logistically, with attendance at top conferences such as NeurIPS 2024 beginning to outpace venue capacity. These pressures point to a system that is misaligned with its core mission. In response, we propose the Community-Federated Conference (CFC) model, which separates peer review, presentation, and networking into globally coordinated but locally organized components, offering a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient path forward for AI research.
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AI may help you pick the perfect avocado
A new program trained on iPhone photos could curb food waste. Avocados have a carbon footprint that is three times higher than bananas. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The days of buying a rock-tough avocado in the hopes of avoiding mushy food waste may soon be over. Machine learning researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) recently designed an artificial intelligence program that visually assesses avocado quality and ripeness .
SustainDC: Benchmarking for Sustainable Data Center Control Supplementary Information
E-14 F Reward Evaluation and Customization F-19 F.1 Load Shifting Penalty ( LS F-19 F.2 Default Reward Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-19 F.3 Customization of Reward Formulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Workload - The current workload level, which includes both flexible and non-flexible components. The data center modeled is illustrated in Figure 1. The hot air exits the cabinets and returns to the CRAH via the ceiling.
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