Efficiency

This influential paper introduces the concept of Green AI, which encourages AI research that yields better results while consuming less computing power and thus lower environmental impact. The authors contrast Green AI with what they call Red AI: research that seeks to improve accuracy through massive computational power, regardless of the environmental cost. The paper proposes new evaluation criteria for AI research that include computational efficiency alongside accuracy, encouraging more sustainable approaches to AI development.

As Generative AI becomes increasingly integrated into real-world services, energy consumption has become a significant bottleneck—yet it remains under-measured and under-optimized in machine learning (ML) systems. This paper introduces the ML.ENERGY Benchmark and Leaderboard, an open-source suite and evaluation platform designed to measure and compare the inference energy use of AI models in realistic service environments. The authors present four core principles for effective energy benchmarking and illustrate their application within the tool. Results from the benchmark detail energy metrics for 40 popular model architectures across 6 tasks, showcase case studies on design decisions affecting energy use, and demonstrate that automatic optimizations can cut energy consumption by over 40% without sacrificing output quality. The ML.ENERGY Benchmark is extensible, making it a practical resource for both researchers and practitioners seeking to evaluate and minimize the energy footprint of their AI applications.