sustainability

The paper discusses the small scaling exponents of large language models, arguing that they indicate an unsustainable regime in terms of energy resources. It also examines the 'pedestal effect' and draws analogies with fluid turbulence to comment on data smoothness.

Nvidia claims its new fully liquid-cooled data center design for the Rubin generation can reduce water usage to near zero by running servers hotter and using liquid cooling.

Nvidia announces a warm-water cooling system that can reduce on-site data center water use significantly, but critics note that water consumption for electricity generation and chip manufacturing remains unaddressed, meaning the total water footprint is only partially reduced.

A commentary on the unsustainable subsidization of LLM subscriptions, predicting price hikes and ecosystem shifts as VC funding tightens, with concerns about open-source model availability and hardware costs.

Proposes using desalination integrated with data center water cooling systems to address water usage concerns, with the resulting fresh water added to municipal supplies.

Jeff Bezos argues that AI data centers should be prioritized for water and energy resources over human consumption to enable the development of superintelligence, sparking controversy over AI's environmental impact.

Anthropic becomes the first AI startup to join the Frontier carbon removal coalition, contributing to a new $915 million funding tranche that brings total pledges to $1.8 billion for carbon removal projects.

Explores the vast energy efficiency gap between the human brain (15W) and AI hardware (billions of watts needed for real-time simulation), highlighting neuromorphic computing approaches like spin-memristors, phase-change materials, and Super-Turing AI that aim to close this gap.

Nimble's SharePower is a modular 10,000mAh power bank that splits into two 5,000mAh halves for sharing with a friend, featuring magnetic connection, load balancing, and sustainable materials.

An article about a new approach to data center energy management, where software called Conductor allows facilities to flexibly reduce power usage during grid spikes, demonstrated through a simulation of the UK's grid during a soccer match. The technology aims to address the bottleneck of getting data centers online quickly without building new power plants.

The U.S. government is reportedly allowing the Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (FDCEA) to expire, removing key cybersecurity and sustainability standards for federal data centers amidst the AI boom and community backlash.

This position paper argues that current AI paradigms are insufficient for addressing global systemic risks and proposes Planet-Centered AI (PCAI) as a new design philosophy that treats Earth's interconnected systems as first-class concerns.

A commentary on the subsidized pricing of AI APIs, warning that current costs are below actual expenses and may rise significantly, posing risks to businesses built on these assumptions.

Researchers at UC San Diego are repurposing retired smartphones into a low-carbon computing platform, with Google's support to deploy a datacenter built from 2,000 Pixel phones for cloud computing.

Renault Group highlights its pioneering work on electric motors that use no rare earths, specifically its EESM technology, which has been mass-marketed since 2012.

While AI data centers' water use is negligible globally, they can significantly strain local water supplies in specific regions, prompting tech companies like Amazon and Google to improve efficiency and fund water replenishment projects.

The Sovereign Tech Fellowship expands in 2026, supporting 14 open source maintainers, community managers, and technical writers across Rust, Python, and other ecosystems, with a focus on security, sustainability, and community.

MÖVE is a holistic benchmark for evaluating large language models in the German public sector, covering performance and governance criteria across 39 models using ten German-language datasets.

Amazon reported that its global data centers consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025, a 2% drop from 2024, amid growing concerns over water and energy use for AI infrastructure. The company claims higher efficiency than some rivals like Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

Mexican World Cup stadiums are undergoing upgrades to meet FIFA's LEED environmental certifications for the 2026 World Cup, focusing on energy, water, and waste management.