Quantifying the Relationship Between Clinical Safety and Environmental Impact in Therapeutic LLMs
The deployment of large language models (LLMs) in mental health contexts raises questions about the relationship between clinical safety and environmental cost. In this paper, we examine this relationship by combining K-Bench clinical safety scores with EcoLogits life-cycle assessment estimates across 47 supported model configurations. We evaluate model performance and environmental impact across four dimensions: energy use, carbon emissions, water consumption, and abiotic depletion. The results indicate a non-linear trade-off at the upper end of the safety distribution: a 2.61 percentage-point increase in clinical safety score corresponded to an approximately 60-fold increase in estimate...
| Authors | Alireza A. Safaei, Laura M. Vowels, Matthew J. Vowels et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CY |
| Published | 12 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 12 August 2026 |
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