AI Carbon Footprint

What it is

AI carbon footprint is the environmental impact of training and running AI systems. Training large models requires massive computation, consuming significant electricity and generating carbon emissions. Inference at scale also has meaningful energy costs.

Why it matters

AI has real environmental costs. Training frontier models can emit as much carbon as multiple cars over their lifetimes. As AI use scales, these impacts accumulate. Awareness of AI's footprint informs choices about when AI use is justified and advocacy for more efficient approaches.