--- description: Find out why Sasha Luccioni made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2024: Sasha Luccioni image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab3a4f6d693ac2f4/698a5a87d07533adf9e712b9/TIME100-AI-2024-LEADERS_Sasha-Luccioni_RM-NEW.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Sep 05, 2024 # Sasha Luccioni by [Harry Booth](/author/harry-booth/) ## Harry Booth Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Booth is a reporter at TIME.  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source: Courtesy of Sasha Luccioni) About 5 years ago, Sasha Luccioni was researching ways AI could help tackle climate change when a single question prompted her to rethink: What if AI was part of the problem? “Every time you do a Google search, you don't know how much energy that's using. Every time you use an AI to generate an image, you don’t know how much energy that’s using,” Luccioni says. The tech industry, she says, has not been forthcoming with data about the carbon footprint of this new technology. That revelation spurred Luccioni to examine AI’s environmental costs. In 2020, she helped create a [tool](https://codecarbon.io/#about "undefined") for developers—which has since been downloaded over [one million times](https://www.pepy.tech/projects/Codecarbon "undefined")—to quantify the carbon footprint of running a piece of code. Two years later, she co-authored one of the [first studies](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.02001 "undefined") to calculate the carbon generated by a large language model. The study estimated that BLOOM, which at the time was the world’s largest multilingual open-source AI model, would generate over 50 metric tons of CO2 over its life cycle. That’s roughly the equivalent of flying from London to New York and back about [80 times](https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx#:~:text=ICEC%20is%20the%20only%20internationally,carbon%20emissions%20from%20air%20travel. "undefined"). As Climate and AI lead at Hugging Face, a wildly popular platform for sharing open-source AI models, Luccioni is focused on pushing these insights beyond the research community. In October, she presented her research at [TED](https://www.ted.com/talks/sasha%5Fluccioni%5Fai%5Fis%5Fdangerous%5Fbut%5Fnot%5Ffor%5Fthe%5Freasons%5Fyou%5Fthink?subtitle=en&geo=it "undefined"), and now is developing a first-of-its-kind “energy star rating for AI.” The rating system, set for release later this year, will help engineers and startups compare the climate-impact of different AI models. The aim isn’t to shun AI, Luccioni says, but to help others choose the right tool for the job. _\*Disclosure: Investors in Hugging Face also include Salesforce, where TIME co-chair and owner Marc Benioff is CEO._ [_Buy your copy of the TIME100 AI issue here_](https://magazineshop.us/TIME100AI "undefined") Sasha Luccioni: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2024 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012753/sasha-luccioni/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012753/sasha-luccioni/"},"headline":"Sasha Luccioni","datePublished":"2024-09-05T11:24:03.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:21.866Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012753/sasha-luccioni/","keywords":["Tech"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab3a4f6d693ac2f4/698a5a87d07533adf9e712b9/TIME100-AI-2024-LEADERS_Sasha-Luccioni_RM-NEW.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Harry Booth","jobTitle":"Booth is a reporter at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/harry-booth/"}],"creator":"Harry Booth","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab3a4f6d693ac2f4/698a5a87d07533adf9e712b9/TIME100-AI-2024-LEADERS_Sasha-Luccioni_RM-NEW.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012753/sasha-luccioni/","name":"Sasha Luccioni"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"See Everyone on the 2024 TIME100 AI List","description":"The 2024 TIME100 AI list features innovators, thinkers, shapers and leaders who are making the future of AI.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/kDTs1aRd/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-09-05T10:50:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/kDTs1aRd.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012753/sasha-luccioni/","duration":"PT1M53S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012753/sasha-luccioni/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```