Sustainability via LLM Right-sizing

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13217v2
• Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 03:43:30 GMT
• Title: Sustainability via LLM Right-sizing
• Authors: Jennifer Haase, Finn Klessascheck, Jan Mendling, Sebastian Pokutta,
• Abstract summary: Large language models (LLMs) have become increasingly embedded in organizational.<n>This study offers an empirical answer by evaluating eleven proprietary and open-weight LLMs across ten everyday occupational tasks.<n>Results show that GPT-4o delivers consistently superior performance but at a significantly higher cost and environmental footprint.
• Score: 21.17523328451591
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have become increasingly embedded in organizational workflows. This has raised concerns over their energy consumption, financial costs, and data sovereignty. While performance benchmarks often celebrate cutting-edge models, real-world deployment decisions require a broader perspective: when is a smaller, locally deployable model "good enough"? This study offers an empirical answer by evaluating eleven proprietary and open-weight LLMs across ten everyday occupational tasks, including summarizing texts, generating schedules, and drafting emails and proposals. Using a dual-LLM-based evaluation framework, we automated task execution and standardized evaluation across ten criteria related to output quality, factual accuracy, and ethical responsibility. Results show that GPT-4o delivers consistently superior performance but at a significantly higher cost and environmental footprint. Notably, smaller models like Gemma-3 and Phi-4 achieved strong and reliable results on most tasks, suggesting their viability in contexts requiring cost-efficiency, local deployment, or privacy. A cluster analysis revealed three model groups -- premium all-rounders, competent generalists, and limited but safe performers -- highlighting trade-offs between quality, control, and sustainability. Significantly, task type influenced model effectiveness: conceptual tasks challenged most models, while aggregation and transformation tasks yielded better performances. We argue for a shift from performance-maximizing benchmarks to task- and context-aware sufficiency assessments that better reflect organizational priorities. Our approach contributes a scalable method to evaluate AI models through a sustainability lens and offers actionable guidance for responsible LLM deployment in practice.

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