Salesforce Launches AI Energy Score to Measure Model’s Efficiency

Salesforce has launched a new AI Energy Score, which is a benchmarking tool specially designed to measure and compare the energy consumption of AI models. The company has developed this model in collaboration with Hugging Face, Cohere, and Carnegie Mellon University. Here’s everything you need to know about Salesforce’s first of its kind of benchmarking tool. 

What is an AI Energy Score? 

It was launched at the AI Action Summit, aiming to bring transparency to the environmental impact of AI models. It is designed to establish a clear benchmark for AI model sustainability, which is something similar to the ENERGY STAR program for appliances. Here’s what the AI Energy Score includes:  

• Standardized Energy Ratings: A framework for measuring and comparing AI model energy efficiency.
• Public Leaderboard: A leaderboard featuring scores for common AI tasks performed by 166 models, including Salesforce’s SFR-Embedding, xLAM, and SF-TextBase.
• Benchmarking Portal: A platform where AI developers can submit AI models to be evaluated and added to the leaderboard.
• Recognizable Energy Use Label: A 1- to 5-star label that rates AI model energy use, with five stars indicating the highest efficiency.

How AI Impacts the Environment 

When we think about saving the environment or energy efficiency, the first thing that comes to our mind is petrol/diesel cars or big factory oil spills. However, do you know that AI also has a major carbon footprint? Yes, there are several reports available that claim that AI’s increasing computational power demands and water consumption are posing a big environmental risk, as companies need a large amount of freshwater to cool AI servers.  

There’s no clarity about whether Salesforce’s new AI Energy Score considers water consumption. However, the company has mentioned Agentforce, a platform for deploying autonomous AI agents. According to the official blog post, it is designed with sustainability in mind, delivering performance while minimizing environmental impact. It uses efficient small language models combined with agentic reasoning and data from Salesforce Data Cloud and the Salesforce Platform to reduce energy consumption. 

Leaders on AI Energy Scoring 

“The AI Energy Score exemplifies the missions of the AI Action Summit by tackling a pressing societal issue — AI transparency and sustainability — through bold innovation and global collaboration. We are proud to showcase this groundbreaking initiative at the Summit, as it stands as a powerful testament to the ingenuity of the global academic and industry ecosystem and a rallying call for collective action towards responsible AI development.” – Bruno Bonnell, General Secretary for Investment, France

“Transparency like that offered by the AI Energy Score is crucial. Over the past three years, we’ve collaborated to refine and obtain more granular elements for the key indicators like CPU and RAM data. This initiative sets an important milestone, and we hope more proprietary model providers join us in adopting such practices to drive accountability and sustainability across industries and supply chains. By openly sharing energy consumption data, our companies can collectively implement ecodesign practices and minimize the environmental footprint of AI technologies.” – Ariane Thomas, Global Tech Director of Sustainability, L’OREAL Group

“The AI Energy Score represents a major milestone for sustainable AI. By creating a transparent rating system, we address a key blocker for reducing the environmental impact of AI. We’re thrilled to launch this project and look forward to seeing wider adoption.” – Dr. Sasha Luccioni, AI & Climate Lead, Hugging Face

“Reducing AI energy consumption lowers operational costs, optimizes infrastructure, and enhances long-term sustainability and profitability. We are proud to work with industry leaders to build a more transparent AI ecosystem.” – Suzanne DiBianca, EVP and Chief Impact Officer, Salesforce