MIT AI Risk Repository · domain 6: Socioeconomic & Environmental

6.6 Environmental harm

The development and operation of AI systems causing environmental harm, such as through energy consumption of data centers, or material and carbon footprints associated with AI hardware.

Risk entries: 57
Frameworks citing it: 12
Recorded incidents: 1
Incidents since 2020: 1

Causal entity (risk entries)

Causal entity (risk entries)
Label	Value
AI	24
Human	15
Other	13
Not coded	4

Intent (risk entries)

Intent (risk entries)
Label	Value
Unintentional	35
Other	12
Intentional	5
Not coded	4

Timing (risk entries)

Timing (risk entries)
Label	Value
Other	24
Post-deployment	20
Pre-deployment	8
Not coded	4

Recorded incidents per yearIncident date; current year partial

Recorded incidents per year
Label	Value
2024	1

Entries by levelRisk categories, subcategories and additional evidence coded to this subdomain

Entries by level
Label	Value
Risk Category	19
Risk Sub-Category	38

Risk entries

Browse and export all

Environmental
The risk of harm to the natural environment posed by the ML system.
The Risks of Machine Learning Systems (Tan2022) · AI · Unintentional · Other
Nature
"Short-term or long-term Negative effects on the natural environment"
Risks of AI Scientists: Prioritizing Safeguarding Over Autonomy (Tang2025) · Other · Other · Other
Environment
"The impact of AI on the environment, including risks related to climate change and pollution."
A Taxonomy of Systemic Risks from General-Purpose AI (Uuk2025) · AI · Unintentional · Post-deployment
Energy-intensive processes
"AI data collection, storage, and model training are energy-intensive, contributing to environmental risks."
A Taxonomy of Systemic Risks from General-Purpose AI (Uuk2025) · Other · Unintentional · Pre-deployment
Environmental harms from operation LMs
"Large-scale machine learning models, including LMs, have the potential to create significant environmental costs via their energy demands, the associated carbon emissions for training and operating t...
Ethical and social risks of harm from language models (Weidinger2021) · AI · Unintentional · Other
Environmental harms from operating LMs
"LMs (and AI more broadly) can have an environmental impact at different levels, including: (1) direct impacts from the energy used to train or operate the LM, (2) secondary impacts due to emissions f...
Taxonomy of Risks posed by Language Models (Weidinger2022) · AI · Unintentional · Other
Environmental damage
"Creating negative environmental impacts though model development and deployment"
Sociotechnical Safety Evaluation of Generative AI Systems (Weidinger2023) · AI · Unintentional · Other