Evaluation of ML Resource Utilization Requires Model Life Cycle Assessment

2026-05-31

AI Summary

This study addresses a critical gap in current AI efficiency evaluations, which typically focus only on isolated training or inference phases and fail to capture the full lifecycle resource consumption and environmental impact of AI systems. To overcome this limitation, the work introduces, for the first time, a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework tailored to machine learning. This approach systematically integrates energy use and embedded environmental costs across all stages—including hardware manufacturing, model training, and deployment—thereby transcending the narrow scope of conventional assessments. By providing a holistic and accurate methodology for evaluating sustainability, the proposed framework offers researchers, developers, and policymakers a robust tool to guide more environmentally responsible design, deployment, and regulation of AI technologies.

Abstract

Proper accounting of the energy requirements and environmental impact of artificial intelligence (AI) systems is necessary for researchers, developers, policy makers, and users to assess the barriers to building systems at scale. With the growing complexity of pipelines and underlying infrastructure needed to develop and deploy AI systems, previous approaches for evaluating AI efficiency which focus on the costs of a single training run or an individual inference prediction are no longer sufficient. In this position paper, we enunciate the need for applying life cycle assessment to evaluate the costs of the machine learning model development and deployment pipeline to properly account for the required resources and downstream impact. Life cycle assessments enable the incorporation of costs across the full life cycle of an AI system and its underlying infrastructure, from the embodied costs associated with the physical computing hardware through the operational costs in training and inference.

Problem

• machine learning
• resource utilization
• life cycle assessment
• environmental impact
• AI systems

Innovation

• Life Cycle Assessment
• Machine Learning Efficiency
• AI Environmental Impact
• Resource Utilization
• Model Deployment Pipeline