The AI boom sidelined sustainability. Two researchers want to change that

Welcome to Eye on AI, with AI reporter Sharon Goldman. In today’s issue: A new effort to bring sustainability back into the AI conversation…Cerebras prices IPO above expected range…Anthropic is now courting small business owners…and court filing shows Sam Altman has an over $2 billion stake in companies that dealt with Open AI. Over the past couple of years, public discussions about AI sustainability have largely been drowned out by headlines about the race for computing power, energy, and geopolitical advantage. But two experts are trying to bring green AI back into the conversation. Sasha Luccioni built a prominent profile over the past five years as AI & climate lead at open source AI company Hugging Face. Now, she and Boris Gamazaychikov, the former head of AI sustainability at Salesforce, say they plan to help organizations make AI sustainability practical and measurable — through rigorous studies examining AI’s environmental impacts, research-driven guidance on AI strategy and procurement, and tools and frameworks that developers and business leaders can apply in the real world. Most companies still care about sustainability goals internally, even if the public discourse has shifted toward ‘AI race’ rhetoric and beating China, she said. The pair’s newly-launched Sustainable AI Group will help businesses “better understand the choices that they can make,” she explained—where models are running and what kind of models are used to help organizations decarbonize and “de-risk their AI use as much as possible.” AI can be selected with sustainability in mind The problem, Luccioni said, is that today’s AI, with its energy-hungry data centers and heat-intensive chips and servers that often require massive cooling systems, is exposing organizations to volatile costs, supply constraints, regulatory uncertainty, and growing pressure from both communities and employees. But, she added, the good news is that every layer of the AI stack can be de