Beyond State-of-the-Art: Standardising Environmental Impact Metrics for AI Research
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The paper highlights that as Large Language Models grow in capability and prevalence, their environmental footprint is increasing, yet the machine learning community lacks standardized carbon accounting practices. An automated review of 5,285 NeurIPS 2025 papers shows almost no reporting of environmental impact. To address this, the authors propose standardized sustainability metrics for training efficiency, heuristics for estimating inference carbon costs, a software tool called carbonbenchmark for tracking emissions, and the SMAJ framework to encourage prioritizing computational efficiency and environmental accountability over marginal accuracy gains.
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 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. 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:2502. 20016v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Sustainability encompasses three key facets: economic, environmental, and social.