Sasha Luccioni

Photo by Midjourney 6.1

Sasha Luccioni is at the forefront of merging artificial intelligence with climate action. As the AI & Climate Lead at Hugging Face, Luccioni has been pioneering efforts to understand and mitigate the environmental impact of AI. Her journey into this critical intersection began about five years ago with a thought-provoking realization: AI, while powerful, could be part of the problem it aims to solve.

In 2020, Luccioni helped develop a tool for developers to quantify the carbon footprint of running AI models, a tool that has since been downloaded over a million times. She co-authored a groundbreaking study two years later, calculating that BLOOM, the world’s largest multilingual open-source AI model at the time, would generate over 50 metric tons of CO2 throughout its lifecycle — equivalent to around 80 transatlantic flights.

At Hugging Face, Luccioni is working to expand these insights beyond academia. In October, she presented her findings at TED and is currently developing an “energy star rating for AI,” a first-of-its-kind system set to launch later this year. This initiative will empower engineers and startups to make informed choices by comparing the climate impact of different AI models. Luccioni’s goal isn’t to discourage AI use but to promote more sustainable practices, ensuring that AI can be a force for good in the fight against climate change.