By Molly Taft
Publication Date: 2026-05-13 19:15:00
Building AI sustainably seems like a pipe dream as tech giants that had previously made promises to reduce emissions compete by building massive fossil fuel-powered data centers.
The push to expand AI at all costs has been reinforced by the Trump administration, which is also rolling back environmental protections.
Despite these headwinds, Sasha Luccioni, an AI sustainability researcher, believes the demand for greater transparency in AI from both companies and individuals on the customer side is higher than ever.
In her four years at Hugging Face, an AI company, Luccioni has become a leader in efforts to bring greater transparency to AI’s emissions and environmental impact, including pioneering a ranking documenting the energy efficiency of open-source AI models. She has also been an outspoken critic of large AI companies, which she says are deliberately withholding information about energy and sustainability from the public.
Now she is founding the Sustainable AI Group, a…
