Efficiency Will Not Lead to Sustainable Reasoning AI

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wiesner, Philipp, O'Neill, Daniel W., Larosa, Francesca, Kao, Odej
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Wiesner, Philipp
O'Neill, Daniel W.
Larosa, Francesca
Kao, Odej
author_facet Wiesner, Philipp
O'Neill, Daniel W.
Larosa, Francesca
Kao, Odej
contents AI research is increasingly moving toward complex problem solving, where models are optimized not only for pattern recognition but for multi-step reasoning. Historically, computing's global energy footprint has been stabilized by sustained efficiency gains and natural saturation thresholds in demand. But as efficiency improvements are approaching physical limits, emerging reasoning AI lacks comparable saturation points: performance is no longer limited by the amount of available training data but continues to scale with exponential compute investments in both training and inference. This paper argues that efficiency alone will not lead to sustainable reasoning AI and discusses research and policy directions to embed explicit limits into the optimization and governance of such systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_15259
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficiency Will Not Lead to Sustainable Reasoning AI
Wiesner, Philipp
O'Neill, Daniel W.
Larosa, Francesca
Kao, Odej
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
AI research is increasingly moving toward complex problem solving, where models are optimized not only for pattern recognition but for multi-step reasoning. Historically, computing's global energy footprint has been stabilized by sustained efficiency gains and natural saturation thresholds in demand. But as efficiency improvements are approaching physical limits, emerging reasoning AI lacks comparable saturation points: performance is no longer limited by the amount of available training data but continues to scale with exponential compute investments in both training and inference. This paper argues that efficiency alone will not lead to sustainable reasoning AI and discusses research and policy directions to embed explicit limits into the optimization and governance of such systems.
title Efficiency Will Not Lead to Sustainable Reasoning AI
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15259