Pith Number

pith:QQMDWCSF

pith:2026:QQMDWCSF7ASBY6KIZY7CLDOKMX

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Position: Sustainable Open-Source AI Requires Tracking the Cumulative Footprint of Derivatives

Ahmed Y. Radwan, Deval Pandya, Graham W. Taylor, Iuliia Zarubiieva, Nate Lesperance, Sedef Akinli Kocak, Shaina Raza

Open-source AI sustainability requires tracking cumulative environmental footprints across model derivatives, not just base-model efficiency.

arxiv:2601.21632 v4 · 2026-01-29 · cs.ET

Open paper page JSON Open Graph Bundle Merged state Verified badge What is a Pith Number?

Add to your LaTeX paper

\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{QQMDWCSF7ASBY6KIZY7CLDOKMX}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

We take the position that compute efficiency alone is insufficient for sustainability in open-source AI: lower per-run costs can accelerate experimentation and deployment, increasing aggregate environmental footprint unless impacts are measurable and comparable across derivative lineages.

C2weakest assumption

That standardized reporting metadata and public dashboards will be adopted widely enough to change behavior and reduce aggregate footprint without restricting openness or adding meaningful overhead.

C3one line summary

Sustainable open-source AI needs infrastructure to track and aggregate environmental footprints across all model derivatives rather than only base models.

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-06-02T01:03:41.416502Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

84183b0a45f8241c7948ce3e258dca65d42086718e8a17b72aa991a7833ec07e

Aliases

arxiv: 2601.21632 · arxiv_version: 2601.21632v4 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2601.21632 · pith_short_12: QQMDWCSF7ASB · pith_short_16: QQMDWCSF7ASBY6KI · pith_short_8: QQMDWCSF

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/QQMDWCSF7ASBY6KIZY7CLDOKMX \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 84183b0a45f8241c7948ce3e258dca65d42086718e8a17b72aa991a7833ec07e

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "9f437f796d86d7726ba6eeba7cb66c441248edc8f57864dff637c1653156d2c6",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.ET",
    "submitted_at": "2026-01-29T12:32:11Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "0889095c2d165f1e5b465a78c13d8ce993f881b6cb37bd20174ff3b4a5dc548e"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2601.21632",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 4
  }
}