The paper analyzes the environmental footprint of machine learning model training, focusing on large language models and their hardware. It finds that energy use and environmental impacts have risen exponentially over the past decade, even when employing carbon‑efficient electricity and more efficient hardware. The study argues that optimization strategies alone cannot curb these impacts due to a rebound effect, and stresses the need to evaluate hardware life‑cycle impacts and integrate environmental metrics into NLP research practices.
arXiv:2609.00847v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As machine learning and artificial intelligence find their way into nearly every aspect of climate, weather, and Earth system modeling, it is worth p...
arXiv:2606. 07632v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Proper accounting of the energy requirements and environmental impact of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is necessary for researchers, developers, policy makers, and users to assess the barriers to building systems at scale.
arXiv:2602. 19789v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This position paper argues that the machine learning community must move from preaching to practising data frugality for responsible artificial intelligence (AI) development.
The paper argues that large language models (LLMs) have a growing carbon footprint and that current efficiency gains are offset by rebound effects such as Jevons Paradox. It proposes applying the EU waste hierarchy—prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery, and disposal—to LLMs, suggesting that preventing waste and unnecessary use can significantly reduce environmental impact. The authors emphasize that treating LLMs as products that can become waste offers new ways to motivate more sustainable practices.
arXiv:2607. 09084v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The rapid expansion of large-scale AI models has led to significant performance breakthroughs across diverse domains, yet it has also raised critical concerns regarding computational costs, energy consumption, and environmental sustainability.
arXiv:2607. 01258v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been accompanied by significant increases in computational and environmental costs, driven by large-scale investments in AI infrastructure, hardware, and software.
arXiv:2606. 11215v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) usage in recent years has become increasingly widespread in the Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) community.
arXiv:2608. 09998v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have become powerful tools for supporting and automating complex human tasks.
The paper presents an LLM-based predictive scheduling system that forecasts execution time and energy consumption from source code, aiming to improve data center sustainability. By integrating these predictions into a real-time GPU allocation algorithm, the system reduces both energy use and queuing delays. In a collaboration with a data center, the approach achieved a 32% drop in energy consumption and a 30% reduction in waiting time.
The paper investigates the energy costs of multilingual large language model (LLM) inference, revealing significant disparities across languages. Using the ML.Energy framework, the authors find that energy consumption per output token can differ by up to 8.3×, and total energy for a fixed request set can vary up to 179×, with English being the cheapest and Pashto the most expensive. The study attributes these differences to higher per-token costs for complex or rare scripts and longer outputs for low‑resource languages, and notes that high‑energy languages also tend to have lower task accuracy.
arXiv:2606. 14707v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AI training and deployment consume substantial electricity, but carbon outcomes remain weakly integrated into routine model development decisions.
arXiv:2608. 08761v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In an era defined by escalating climate change and the pervasive deployment of edge intelligence, the environmental cost of semiconductor manufacturing and operation has reached a critical threshold.