As tech firms keep adding the largest and most compute-intensive AI models into more and more aspects of our digital lives, they are increasingly dependent on a growing share of existing energy and natural resources, leading to rising costs for everyone else, write Sasha Luccioni and Yacine Jernite.

Well folks, the butterfly's out of the bag -- I'm doing another TED talk! 🦋 🎤 Catch me during NYC Climate Week on September 24th for an evening of talks hosted by TED Countdown -- I will be talking about all things AI and sustainability 🌍 countdown.ted.com/ai-for-clima...

Think AI's rising energy demands aren't your problem? Think again! ⚡ In our commentary, @yjernite.bsky.social and I explain how AI & data center expansion is making energy bills rise in the US, what the mechanisms driving this are, and why it matters. www.techpolicy.press/how-your-uti...

𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁! 🚀 If you've been looking for a lightweight, open-source package to use for tracking metrics, parameters, and hyperparameters, look no further! 👩‍💻 Trackio is local-first, free and open-source, and comes integrated with 🤗 Datasets and Spaces 📈 huggingface.co/blog/trackio

I am so grateful that this paper is out! It so eloquently describes so many of the issues I've seen with a lot of AGI experimentation that concludes that LLMs are scheming, ill-intentioned, or malicious, and the chimp language metaphor is the cherry on the cake 🍰 arxiv.org/abs/2507.03409

Friends! Does anyone know of any model distillation with public logs (W&B or other)? I'm trying to figure out the energy tradeoffs between model training and distillation..

. @sashamtl.bsky.social takes centre stage at the AI for Good Summit, hitting hard with the urgent and critical issues of Co2 emissions, energy demands, and cooling water needs demands of AI, stressing the planet

I was so tempted to take a Sharpie to this monstrosity 😇

Sometimes it's hard to find allies in a big room full of people talking about AI.. thankfully @abeba.bsky.social is always there to kick ass and call for accountability 🦋

Thinking about Montréal? 😍 Montréal International and the Ville de Montréal have unveiled a new video to attract U.S.-based researchers and scientists! Featuring: ✔️ @sashamtl.bsky.social ✔️ @weisslab.bsky.social ✔️ Dr Rachel Bouserhal #montreal #research #scientists

I've always felt that Montréal is a safe space for research -- it’s a city that values science, collaboration, and diversity, and I’m proud to call it home 🏠 Like I said in the video: Montréal is home—and all are welcome.💖🦋 youtu.be/dWiL4b7-KEA

Tomorrow @facct.bsky.social , 9:36am (☕️☕️☕️), @sashamtl.bsky.social and I on stage questioning the bigger-is-better narrative in AI. Come for the 🌶, stay for the evidence and critical thinking (hopefully)

New @sashamtl.bsky.social et al paper - assessing whether machine learning model developers disclose basic environmental / energy information with their models. They mostly do not!! Grim results for most of the big companies: arxiv.org/abs/2506.15572 huggingface.co/spaces/sasha...

Does a ChatGPT query really use ten times more energy than a Google search? Does training any AI model emit as much CO2 as 5 cars? and can AI help us reduce global GHG emissions by 10%? 🤔 We tracked down the origins of these numbers 🕵‍♀️ and wrote a paper about it! arxiv.org/abs/2506.15572

how much energy does your ChatGPT search really use? i wrote about the trials and tribulations of putting a number on AI emissions, & how some of the most powerful companies in the world could clear it up for us — but they're staying silent. feat a peek at new research from @sashamtl.bsky.social !

One of the biggest frustrations I have is the lack of transparency around AI's energy use and environmental impacts. I know the numbers are out there... but somehow we're not seeing them 🫠 Thank you @wired.com for covering this topic in such depth and detail ! www.wired.com/story/ai-car...

I had someone tell me "I didn't know there was more to AI than LLMs" today and I swear I died a little inside 🥺

Your Honor, please let the record reflect that I had a massive crush on Pedro Pascal way before everyone else did ... over 2 years ago. Check out the evergreen Space I made to find your inner Pedro here! huggingface.co/spaces/sasha...

I didn't announce this when it happened, but my article, "Metaethical perspectives for 'Benchmarking' AI ethics", with @sashamtl.bsky.social, was published back in March in the AI and Ethics journal. doi.org/10.1007/s436...

Never thought I'd see my name in a museum exhibit! 🥹 A quote from my TED talk is featured in an exhibit on AI at the Exploratorium in San Francisco -- go check it out if you're in town!

People saying "thank you" to ChatGPT is apparently costing OpenAI tens of millions of dollars -- but how does that translate to energy? ⚡ We ran some experiments where we show that the total energy consumed is ~0.245 Wh (roughly equivalent to powering a 5 W LED bulb for approximately 3 minutes).

Also - SHOW 👏 US 👏 THE 👏 DAMN 👏 RECEIPTS

Finally some numbers about ChatGPT's energy and water use? ⚡ Even if this is the true amount of energy used for a query (and that's a big if!), multiplied by the billions of queries a day, this adds up massively. And that's not counting image generation, which is much more energy-intensive!

Main takeaways from @epochai.bsky.social analysis: "𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘐 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳."

📢 The Butterfly Effect: measuring AI's Impacts on Society and the Environment : le 11 juin, l’ENS vous convie à une conférence exceptionnelle de @sashamtl.bsky.social‬, titulaire de la chaire “IA et justice sociale” Fondation Abeona - École normale supérieure - Obvia. 📍 ENS 👉 bit.ly/4kxd0ue

If I wanted a machine designed specifically and solely to blow smoke up my ass I could make one a lot cheaper and safer than an LLM

I love it when people ask me for photos of me "in the field". You mean.... at home, in front of the computer, in my sweatpants? 😅 Sadly, research in AI isn't quite as visually captivating as, say biology or chemistry! Usually it just involves a computer screen 🤓

Taking a look at Microsoft's 2025 ESG. They report an increase in GHG emissions of 23.4% (and 168% increase in energy use, 71% revenue growth) in 2024 over 2020. In the supplementary material, however, you find that their *actual* (location-based) emissions have increased by 55.4% in that time...

Discovering smaller models perform just as well while using 200x less energy: 🤯 Sometimes the best AI strategy is just... not using the biggest hammer for every nail. Must-read by @sashamtl.bsky.social huggingface.co/blog/bigger-...

How can we make informed choices based on performance AND energy when using AI in real-life tasks like question answering? By evaluating them and picking the models that optimize both factors! Check out my new blog post on the subject: huggingface.co/blog/sasha/e...

The irony of writing an op-ed about how we need more numbers about AI's energy usage... and getting publicly attacked by corporate greenwashers about the fact that the numbers I use are inaccurate. I mean, yes, surely, but... the only way to prove that is by reporting them in the first place? 🤷

“Generative AI tools are getting practically shoved down our throats and it’s getting harder and harder to opt out, or to make informed choices when it comes to energy and climate" - @sashamtl.bsky.social

Ce jeudi 22 mai, je discute à C2Mtl: IA et effet papillon avec @sashamtl.bsky.social et datas osées avec @MattKlein. // Next Thursday, I’m speaking at C2 Montréal! On AI and the butterfly effect with @sashamtl.bsky.social and risqué data @MattKlein. 👉 i.snoball.it/p/ieaIu/blue... #C2MTL25

Amazing work from the @mittechreviewbr.bsky.social on the energy demands of AI - I'm so proud to have contributed to the piece, on a topic so near and dear to my heart: www.technologyreview.com/supertopic/a...

Can't think of a better way to spend a rainy Saturday than reading @karenhao.bsky.social's new book! 📖 I'm stocking up on popcorn for what's guaranteed to be a wild ride! 🍿 🍿

I respect people who try to estimate the environmental impacts of proprietary AI models... but I'm convinced that instead of trying to reverse-engineer those numbers and debate them, we should just all collectively put pressure on them to publish the info themselves -- I know they have it!

"Although large language models consume significantly less energy, water, and carbon per task than human labor"

I'm one very happy butterfly at the @hf.co HQ in Brooklyn! 🦋🤗

The butterfly has landed in Brooklyn! 🦋🦋

Someone used AI to generate an image of me to...illustrate a LinkedIn post about the environmental impacts of AI? Oh, the irony...🤢 (but that creepy AI clone of me is going to haunt my nightmares until the end of time)

In the year of our Lord 2025... we are still putting on makeup on women without their consent. It's truly like feminism never happened 🙅‍♀️ (I have been ranting about this ever since people started using it to demonstrate GANs back in the 2010s, I can't believe it's still an "acceptable" task in AI!)

I've been at Hugging Face for almost 4 (!) years and as part of my journey, I've gotten increasingly convinced that open-source AI is a win for sustainability because it lets us 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲, 𝗥𝗲𝘂𝘀𝗲 and 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗲 AI models and datasets 🌱 huggingface.co/blog/sasha/r...

Also notable that the source for Ritchie's article is another Substacker, Andy Masley, who's the head of the DC 'Effective Altruism' chapter. It is absolutely wild that generative chatbot companies disclose NOTHING and then point to guesstimate substacks when talking to media. I mean, not wild.

Putting aside the fact that the basic numbers are wrong, I think the *COMPARISON* is wrong too, because people are using ChatGPT as a replacement for ultra-efficient alternatives (eg - calculators). Per-use 'efficiency' wildly downplays the societal systemic effects here bsky.app/profile/keta...

The "3 Wh per ChatGPT query" estimate is back and haunting my social media feeds! 🧟‍♀️ First of all -- that number is a back of the envelope calculation 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗯𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

I agree with @abeba.bsky.social here; but, for better or worse, I am trying to fix the hot mess that is the field of value alignment! 😬

We just integrated the new Qwen3-8B into Chat UI Energy and asked it to do a simple multiplication problem. What's the energy cost? → Without reasoning: wrong (😅), but low energy use → With reasoning: correct (!!)… but using 42x more energy!

At this point, it truly feels like there's more people recording podcasts than listening to them.. and they all take it very personally when you decline their invitations 🫩

"New aerial surveillance footage [...] has found that Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, is using 35 methane gas generators to power its "Colossus" supercomputer facility" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... Methane gas generations are some Medieval shit!

It's official, @facct.bsky.social decisions are out! 🤩 Both of the papers I co-authored -- one on hype and sustainability (arxiv.org/abs/2409.14160) and the other about environmental rebound effects (arxiv.org/abs/2501.165...) made it in! I'm still pinching myself... 🦋 See you all in Athens! 🏛️