This work investigates the potential of the waste hierarchy from the EU's Waste Framework Directive, which suggests five different measures for how to manage waste: prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery, and disposal, and calls to attention that prevention of unnecessary use of LLMs carry huge potential for lowering the climate impact of the models.
Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) are machine learning (ML) models that have an increasingly large carbon footprint through their development and use. Efforts to increase the energy efficiency of these models have not translated into reduced consumption due to rebound effects such as Jevons Paradox - that increased efficiency drives increased use. There is therefore a need for additional measures to solve this problem. We suggest that one possible way forward is to use life cycle thinking, and view LLMs as products that can become waste. With this perspective, we investigate the potential of the waste hierarchy from the EU's Waste Framework Directive, which suggests five different measures for how to manage waste: prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery, and disposal. We examine how these measures can inform and motivate new types of thinking and approaches to reducing LLM waste and their environmental impact in general. Applying the waste hierarchy to LLMs highlights that preventing waste is essential for reducing the models'environmental impact, mainly because it reduces the need for training new models. Prevention can be achieved through many existing methods for reusing,"recycling", and"recovering"LLMs. Additionally, disposal can be important both for saving energy and for keeping a considerate attitude to the resources being spent on training LLMs. We also call to attention that prevention of unnecessary use of LLMs carry huge potential for lowering the climate impact of the models.
Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly reshaping software development, but their impact across the full software development lifecycle is underexplored. Existing work tends to focus on isolated activities such as code generation or testing, leaving open questions about how LLMs affect developers, processes, products, and the broader software ecosystem. We address this gap through semi-structured interviews with sixteen early-adopter software professionals who integrated LLM-based tools into their day-to-day work in early to mid-2023. We treat these interviews as early empirical evidence and compare participants’ accounts with recent work on LLMs in software engineering, noting which early patterns persist or shift. Using thematic analysis, we organize our findings around four dimensions: people, process, product, and society. Developers reported substantial productivity gains from reducing mundane tasks, streamlining search, and accelerating debugging, but also described a productivity-quality paradox: they frequently discarded generated code and shifted effort from writing code to critically evaluating and integrating it. LLM use was highly phase-dependent, with strong uptake in implementation and debugging but limited influence on requirements gathering and collaborative work. Participants developed new competencies to use LLMs effectively, including prompt engineering strategies, multi-layered verification, and security-conscious integration to protect proprietary data. They also anticipated changes in hiring expectations, team practices, and computing education, while emphasizing that human judgment and foundational software engineering skills remain essential. Our findings, consistent with evidence from large-scale studies, offer actionable implications for developers, organizations, educators, and tool designers seeking to integrate LLMs responsibly into professional software practice.
Benyamin T. Tabarsi, Heidi Reichert, Sam Gilson et al.· Empirical Software Engineeri...· 0 citations
The proposed model aims to support the formalization of model selection processes, improve decision-making, and enhance the traceability and transparency of LLMOps practices and forms part of a broader research effort toward the formalization of the entire LLMOps life cycle.
Maria Chernigovskaya, A. Nahhas, Christian Haertel et al.· Proceedings of the 21st Inte...· 0 citations
The use of large language models (LLMs) is being introduced into requirements, code generation, testing, maintenance, and documentation processes, but most IT organizations have yet to establish a practical and evidence-based methodology regarding when these tools are value added, when they become risky, and how to regulate their usage. The article is a synthesis of recent empirical research, surveys of developers, and guidance on the use of LLMs in software engineering and translates that information into a playbook of guidance that can be applied by practitioners. The primary contribution of the article is a staged adoption framework, which includes explore, pilot, and scale, supported with lightweight survey templates, small-task assessment designs, and accept/edit/reject logging practices that organizations can adopt to produce their own context-specific evidence. The objective is to facilitate disciplined, open-minded adoption of LLMs in actual software engineering environments.
A pattern language for green computing is envisioned, covering the various phases of the software lifecycle in which green computing solutions can be applied, as well as important application areas, such as artificial intelligence or cloud computing.
Martin Beisel, Benjamin Weder· Proceedings of the 21st Inte...· 0 citations
It is suggested that technical version succession does not necessarily amount to effective replacement on the user side, and user experience can provide important information for identifying post-deployment impacts and should be incorporated into lifecycle evaluation and decision-making.
This paper argues that ontology-driven approaches provide the foundation for an acquisition ecosystem that is not only more coherent and collaborative but also adaptive to the dynamic conditions of the 21st century.
P. de Haan, Mahmoud Efatmaeshnik, Ady James· Proceedings of the INCOSE AO...· 0 citations
A new machine-learning framework aims to improve the success rate of computational protein design while moving away from results that reproduce sequences found in nature.
