Evaluating the sustainability of Artificial Intelligence applications across the product lifecycle

Due to the emergence of global challenges, the European policy called Industry 5.0 demands technologies to become resilient, sustainable and human-centric; the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Knowledge Management (KM) (i.e., AI-based KM) represents an opportunity to accomplish this ambitious goal thanks to the possibility of combining humans and computers’ unique skills. While the compliance of AI-based KM with human-centric requirements is ap-parent, its long-term sustainability is still an object of discussion. In response to I5.0’s request for metrics of sustainability, this paper presents a lifecycle analysis of AI-based KM’s applications retrieved from literature to establish whether they can be deemed socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable. A list of sources was collected by means of a literature search, to be later evaluated through sustainability criteria specific for the design and use phases of life. It was found that AI-based KM applications supporting fractions of the knowledge lifecycle may become fragile in the long-term, because potentially leading to re-positories’ indefinite growth and information overload in humans and computers; furthermore, it emerged that not enough attention was paid to AI’s accountability and data governance. The mentioned pain points, complemented in this article with practical examples of the counter-measures adopted by virtuous sources, provide scholars with practical indications to lead future research efforts, and contribute to the validation of a framework to assess the long-term sustainability of AI solutions.