Faced with dire reports of looming global catastrophe due to the ongoing climate emergency, many of us are taking a long, hard look at the carbon footprint of our daily lives -- whether it's from the food we eat, how much we drive or how often we fly. But sometimes it's the most intangible of things that may actually be pumping out more carbon than we think -- namely, the surprisingly large carbon footprint that can be associated with creating machine learning models -- the same technology that underlies the apps on our smartphones, digital personal assistants and computers. While using such tech might not necessarily emit all that much carbon, the cause for concern lies behind the carbon impact of the computational processes that go into training AI -- and whether researchers and companies can be well-informed enough to choose less carbon-intensive options. Until now, artificial intelligence researchers have not really had an easily available method to quantify the carbon impact. But that's changing, thanks to a team from Canada's Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), Element AI and Polytechnique Montreal, which recently released a tool designed to help those working in the AI field estimate how much carbon is produced in training their machine learning models.