Autors: Kondratenko A., Kondratenko A., Kamberov, K. H.
Title: May AI be sustainable? An outlook on sustainability and technology
Keywords: AI, Artificial intelligence, Sustainability, Sustainable development

Abstract: The paper studies two of the most relevant tendencies of the modern world, which will change the way we live and think. The first tendency is the development of sustainable societies, which already significantly affects global technologies, policy, and economics. The second tendency is the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, whose applications and capabilities are expanding at an extraordinary pace. The development of Sustainable AI is at the intersection of those tendencies. Progress in this field will shape the basics and the ground rules for applying AI in future societies. The present paper discusses the terms and definitions of Sustainable AI and reviews its existing and potential applications in different domains of science, technology, economics, and policy. Besides, the study analyses tendencies potentially leading to non-sustainable AI and reflects on how to avoid the corresponding complications.

References

  1. Abbeel P, Coates A, Quigley M, Ng AY (2007) an application of reinforcement learning to aerobatic helicopter flight. Advances in neural information processing systems 19: Proceedings of the 2006 Conference. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7503.003.0006
  2. Al Meslamani AZ Beyond implementation: the long-term economic impact of AI in healthcare J Med Econ 2023 26 1566 1569 10.1080/13696998.2023.2285186
  3. Al-Busaidi et al. Redefining boundaries in innovation and knowledge domains: investigating the impact of generative artificial intelligence on copyright and intellectual property rights J Innov Knowl 2024 9 10.1016/j.jik.2024.100630 100630
  4. Amodei et al. (2016) Deep Speech 2: End-to-End Speech Recognition in English and Mandarin. JMLR: W&CP 48.
  5. Arrhenius SA, Borns H (1908) Worlds in the making; the evolution of the universe, New York and London.
  6. Asian News International, 2024. 19112024–45 Item 39.
  7. Barbier EB The concept of sustainable economic development Environ Conserv 1987 14 101 110 10.1017/S0376892900011449
  8. Bengio Y, Hinton G, Stuart R (2024) A right to warn about advanced artificial intelligence [WWW Document]. URL https://righttowarn.ai/ (Accessed 19 Mar 2025).
  9. Bergero C Gosnell G Gielen D Kang S Bazilian M Davis SJ Pathways to net-zero emissions from aviation Nat Sustain 2023 6 404 414 10.1038/s41893-022-01046-9
  10. Bolón-Canedo V Morán-Fernández L Cancela B Alonso-Betanzos A A review of green artificial intelligence: towards a more sustainable future Neurocomputing 2024 599 10.1016/j.neucom.2024.128096 128096
  11. Bond S (2024) How Russia is using artificial intelligence in its propaganda operations. NPR.
  12. Brynjolfsson E The Turing trap: the promise & peril of human-like artificial intelligence Daedalus 2022 151 272 287 10.1162/daed_a_01915
  13. Caney S Hepburn C Carbon trading: unethical, unjust and ineffective? Royal Inst Philosophy Suppl 2011 69 201 234 10.1017/S1358246111000282
  14. Chiu TKF The impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on practices, policies and research direction in education: a case of ChatGPT and Midjourney Interact Learn Environ 2024 32 6187 6203 10.1080/10494820.2023.2253861
  15. Chopra S Emran TB Advances in AI-based prosthetics development: editorial Int J Surg 2024 110 4538 10.1097/JS9.0000000000001573
  16. Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union (European Parliament), Ünver A (2024) Artificial intelligence (AI) and human rights: using AI as a weapon of repression and its impact on human rights: in depth analysis. Publications Office of the European Union.
  17. Doshi AR Hauser OP Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content Sci Adv 2024 10 10.1126/sciadv.adn5290 eadn5290
  18. European Commission, 2025. Artificial Intelligence in healthcare [WWW Document]. Public Health. URL https://health.ec.europa.eu/ehealth-digital-health-and-care/artificial-intelligence-healthcare_en (Accessed 13 Mar 2025).
  19. Fang X Che S Mao M Zhang H Zhao M Zhao X Bias of AI-generated content: an examination of news produced by large language models Sci Rep 2024 14 5224 10.1038/s41598-024-55686-2
  20. Favarò FM Nader N Eurich SO Tripp M Varadaraju N Examining accident reports involving autonomous vehicles in California PLoS ONE 2017 12 10.1371/journal.pone.0184952 e0184952
  21. Freckelton I The 1628 Vasa Inquest in Sweden: learning contemporary lessons for effective death investigation J Law Med 2018 26 285 299
  22. Furch J Konečný V Krobot Z Modelling of life cycle cost of conventional and alternative vehicles Sci Rep 2022 12 10661 10.1038/s41598-022-14715-8
  23. Gani AS, Hyde C (2024) Klarna Stopped all hiring a year ago to replace workers with AI. Bloomberg.com.
  24. Gibney E Ai models fed AI-generated data quickly spew nonsense Nature 2024 632 18 19 10.1038/d41586-024-02420-7
  25. Glassdoor (2025) Working at Peroptyx [WWW Document]. Glassdoor. URL https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Peroptyx-EI_IE6594818.11,19.htm (Accessed 19 Mar 2025).
  26. Goertzel B Artificial General Intelligence: concept, state of the art, and future prospects J Artif Gen Intell 2014 5 1 48 10.2478/jagi-2014-0001
  27. Goldman Sachs Research (2024) AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand. Goldman Sachs.
  28. Google (2024) Environmental Report 2024. URL https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2024-environmental-report (Accessed 15 Nov 2025).
  29. Gray A (2024) ChatGPT “contamination”: estimating the prevalence of LLMs in the scholarly literature. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2403.16887
  30. Gugler K Haxhimusa A Liebensteiner M Effectiveness of climate policies: carbon pricing vs. subsidizing renewables J Environ Econ Manage 2021 106 10.1016/j.jeem.2020.102405 102405
  31. Guo X Sun Y Ren D Life cycle carbon emission and cost-effectiveness analysis of electric vehicles in China Energy Sustain Dev 2023 72 1 10 10.1016/j.esd.2022.11.008
  32. Hartley M AI and automation in reducing IT operational costs Int J Adv Innov Res 2019 9 547 555
  33. Hoag H The problems with emissions trading Nature 2011 10.1038/nature.2011.9491
  34. Getty Images (2023) Case No: IL-2023–000007. URL https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Getty-Images-and-others-v-Stability-AI-14.01.25.pdf (Accessed 15 Nov 2025).
  35. Jiang M Rocktäschel T Grefenstette E General intelligence requires rethinking exploration R Soc Open Sci 2023 10 10.1098/rsos.230539 230539
  36. Kaur R Gabrijelčič D Klobučar T Artificial intelligence for cybersecurity: literature review and future research directions Inf Fusion 2023 97 10.1016/j.inffus.2023.101804 101804
  37. Kessler EH Bierly PE Gopalakrishnan S Vasa syndrome: insights from a 17th-century new-product disaster IEEE Eng Manag Rev 2004 32 38 38 10.1109/EMR.2004.25008
  38. Klein A, Hilster D, Scholten P, van Wijngaarden L, Tol E, Otten M (2021) STREAM Freight Transport 2020. Emissions of freight transport modes. CE Delft, Delft.
  39. Kondratenko AA Zhang M Tavakoli S Altarriba E Hirdaris S Existing technologies and scientific advancements to decarbonize shipping by retrofitting Renew Sustain Energy Rev 2025 212 10.1016/j.rser.2025.115430 115430
  40. Lee J et al. Intelligent upper-limb exoskeleton integrated with soft bioelectronics and deep learning for intention-driven augmentation Npj Flex Electron 2024 8 1 13 10.1038/s41528-024-00297-0
  41. Lim D Generative AI and copyright: principles, priorities and practicalities J Intell Prop Law Pract 2023 18 841 842 10.1093/jiplp/jpad081
  42. Liu C Musharraf M Li F Kujala P A data mining method for automatic identification and analysis of icebreaker assistance operation in ice-covered waters Ocean Eng 2022 266 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2022.112914 112914
  43. Liu Y, Zhang K, Li Y, Yan Z, Gao C, Chen R, Yuan Z, Huang Y, Sun H, Gao J, He L, Sun L (2024) Sora: a review on background, technology, limitations, and opportunities of large vision models. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.17177
  44. Locke J (1690) Essay concerning human understanding (1st ed.). 1 vol. London: Thomas Basset.
  45. Lunde Hermansson A Hassellöv I-M Grönholm T Jalkanen J-P Fridell E Parsmo R Hassellöv J Ytreberg E Strong economic incentives of ship scrubbers promoting pollution Nat Sustain 2024 7 812 822 10.1038/s41893-024-01347-1
  46. Manoharan S An improved safety algorithm for artificial intelligence enabled processors in self driving cars J Artif Intell Capsule Networks 2019 1 95 104 10.36548/jaicn.2019.2.005
  47. McKinney et al. International evaluation of an AI system for breast cancer screening Nature 2020 577 89 94 10.1038/s41586-019-1799-6
  48. Mei Q Xie Y Yuan W Jackson MO A turing test of whether AI chatbots are behaviorally similar to humans Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2024 121 10.1073/pnas.2313925121 e2313925121
  49. Microsoft 2024. How can we advance sustainability? 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report.
  50. Miralay F Use of artificial intelligence and augmented reality tools in art education course Pegem J Educ Instr 2024 14 44 50 10.47750/pegegog.14.03.04
  51. Moro-Visconti R Cruz Rambaud S López Pascual J Artificial intelligence-driven scalability and its impact on the sustainability and valuation of traditional firms Humanit Soc Sci Commun 2023 10 1 14 10.1057/s41599-023-02214-8
  52. Morrison J, Na C, Fernandez J, Dettmers T, Strubell E, Dodge J, (2024) Holistically evaluating the environmental impact of creating language models. Presented at the The Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations.
  53. Nguyen S Gadel M Wang K Li J Zhang X Kong S-C Fu X Qin Z Maritime decarbonization through machine learning: a critical systematic review of fuel and power prediction models Cleaner Logistics Supply Chain 2025 14 10.1016/j.clscn.2025.100210 100210
  54. Nugroho YYT, Manggala PPMD (2024) The use of AI in creating music compositions: a case study on suno application. Presented at the 7th Celt International Conference (CIC 2024), Atlantis Press, pp. 177–189. https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-348-1_13
  55. Olawade DB Wada OZ Odetayo A David-Olawade AC Asaolu F Eberhardt J Enhancing mental health with Artificial Intelligence: current trends and future prospects J Med Surg Public Health 2024 3 10.1016/j.glmedi.2024.100099 100099
  56. Ong JY (2023) “Chinese Instagram” Accused Of Stealing Artists’ work to feed Its AI [WWW Document]. The Chainsaw. URL https://thechainsaw.com/artificial-intelligence/china-instagram-xiaohongshu-art-ai-midjourney/ (Accessed 3.18.25).
  57. Park PS Goldstein S O’Gara A Chen M Hendrycks D AI deception: a survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions Patterns 2024 5 10.1016/j.patter.2024.100988 100988
  58. Peroptyx, 2025. Solutions for machine learning and AI [WWW Document]. URL https://www.peroptyx.com/ (Accessed 3.12.25).
  59. Pienaar W Comparative economic efficiency, operating costs and fuel consumption rates of freight transport modes between the largest industrial cities and seaports in South Africa Risk Gov Control Financ Markets Inst 2013 10.22495/rgcv3i3art2
  60. Pop P Törngren M Yeh S Thompson H Digital technologies for a sustainable nordic future: challenges, opportunities, and policy implications Fast Track Vision 2023 2030 5 9
  61. Purvis B Mao Y Robinson D Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins Sustain Sci 2019 14 681 695 10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5
  62. Rodilosso E Filter bubbles and the unfeeling: how AI for social media can foster extremism and polarization Philos Technol 2024 37 71 10.1007/s13347-024-00758-4
  63. Runco MA AI can only produce artificial creativity J Creat 2023 33 10.1016/j.yjoc.2023.100063 100063
  64. Saha et al. Artificial intelligence and radiologists in prostate cancer detection on MRI (PI-CAI): an international, paired, non-inferiority, confirmatory study Lancet Oncol 2024 25 879 887 10.1016/S1470-2045(24)00220-1
  65. Savage I Comparing the fatality risks in United States transportation across modes and over time Res Transp Econ Econ Transp Safety 2013 43 9 22 10.1016/j.retrec.2012.12.011
  66. Schor J The Overworked american: the unexpected decline of leisure, reprint edition 1993 New York, NY Basic Books
  67. Schwaninger M Systemic design for sustainability Sustain Sci 2018 13 1225 1234 10.1007/s11625-018-0538-5
  68. Searle JR Minds, brains, and programs Behav Brain Sci 1980 3 417 424 10.1017/S0140525X00005756
  69. Sheikh H Prins C Schrijvers E Sheikh H Prins C Schrijvers E Artificial intelligence: definition and background Mission AI: the new system technology 2023 Cham Springer International Publishing 15 41 10.1007/978-3-031-21448-6_2
  70. Shumailov I Shumaylov Z Zhao Y Papernot N Anderson R Gal Y AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data Nature 2024 631 755 759 10.1038/s41586-024-07566-y
  71. Siedl SM Mara M Am I still human? Wearing an exoskeleton impacts self-perceptions of warmth, competence, attractiveness, and machine-likeness Comput Human Behav Artif Humans 2024 2 10.1016/j.chbah.2024.100073 100073
  72. Stone et al (2016) Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030. One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence: Report of the 2015–2016 Study Panel. Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
  73. Tamburrini G The AI carbon footprint and responsibilities of AI scientists Philosophies 2022 7 4 10.3390/philosophies7010004
  74. The New York Times (2023) Case 1:23-cv-11195 Document 1
  75. The Writers Guild of America (2023) Summary of the 2023 WGA MBA [WWW Document]. URL https://www.wgacontract2023.org/the-campaign/summary-of-the-2023-wga-mba (Accessed 3.18.25).
  76. Tomlinson B Black RW Patterson DJ Torrance AW The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans Sci Rep 2024 14 3732 10.1038/s41598-024-54271-x
  77. Turing AM Computing Machinery and Intelligence Creat Comput 1980 6 44 53
  78. Verma S Dwivedi G Verma P Life cycle assessment of electric vehicles in comparison to combustion engine vehicles: a review Mater Today Proc 2022 49 217 222 10.1016/j.matpr.2021.01.666
  79. Vicente L Matute H Humans inherit artificial intelligence biases Sci Rep 2023 13 15737 10.1038/s41598-023-42384-8
  80. Wang Y Liu C Hu W Luo L Shi D Zhang J Yin Q Zhang L Han X He M Economic evaluation for medical artificial intelligence: accuracy vs. cost-effectiveness in a diabetic retinopathy screening case Npj Digit Med 2024 7 1 10 10.1038/s41746-024-01032-9
  81. Warwick K Shah H Can machines think? A report on Turing test experiments at the Royal Society J Exp Theor Artif Intell 2016 10.1080/0952813X.2015.1055826
  82. Xia H Zhang Y Rajabi N Taleb F Yang Q Kragic D Li Z Shaping high-performance wearable robots for human motor and sensory reconstruction and enhancement Nat Commun 2024 15 1760 10.1038/s41467-024-46249-0
  83. Xue Y Lai K Responsible shipping for sustainable development: adoption and performance value Transp Policy 2023 130 89 99 10.1016/j.tranpol.2022.11.007
  84. Yaiprasert C Hidayanto AN AI-powered ensemble machine learning to optimize cost strategies in logistics business Int J Info Manag Data Insights 2024 4 10.1016/j.jjimei.2023.100209 100209
  85. Zeng C Chen X Li S Will Creative Labor Lost Their Jobs? A Social Informatics Study of the “No to AI Generated Images” Campaign Information Management 2024 Cham Springer Nature Switzerland 93 105 10.1007/978-3-031-64359-0_8
  86. Zhang M Tsoulakos N Kujala P Hirdaris S A deep learning method for the prediction of ship fuel consumption in real operational conditions Eng Appl Artif Intell 2024 130 10.1016/j.engappai.2023.107425 107425
  87. Zhang M Wang H Conti F Manderbacka T Remes H Hirdaris S A hybrid deep learning method for the real-time prediction of collision damage consequences in operational conditions Eng Appl Artif Intell 2025 145 10.1016/j.engappai.2025.110158 110158
  88. Zhu Z Dutta A Dai F Exoskeletons for manual material handling – a review and implication for construction applications Autom Constr 2021 122 10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103493 103493

Issue

AI and Society, 2025, Albania, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02804-x

Вид: статия в списание, публикация в издание с импакт фактор, публикация в реферирано издание, индексирана в Scopus и Web of Science