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As tech companies race to build more AI data centers, your electric bill is probably going up. And while some companies are prioritizing adding clean energy to accommodate their intensive demands, climate pollution is also climbing as utilities turn to gas or even coal to support our chatbot habits. But there might be another way for new data centers to get the enormous amount of energy they plan to use. A recent report from the nonprofit Rewiring America suggests that instead of building new power plants, hyperscalersthe Big Tech companies whose data centers provide the backbone to cloud computingcould help homeowners install new solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps. We saw this trend happening with data centers needing capacity on the grid and thought by upgrading households, we can actually create a significant amount of capacity, says Cora Wyent, head of research and data science at Rewiring America, which is focused on electrifying homes and communities. [Interactive Map: Rewiring America] Data centers that are planned or already under construction are projected to add a staggering 93 gigawatts of new power demand to the grid by 2029, or roughly as much electricity as 77 million homes use. But the nonprofit calculated that its possible to cover that growth by adding solar panels and battery storage at peoples homes. Heat pumps can also help. In Georgia, for example, which expects to need an extra 6.7 gigawatts of electric capacity over the next five years, rooftop solar and storage on homes in the state could provide 5.4 gigawatts. The rest could be covered by upgrading houses with inefficient old-school electric heating to heat pumps. (This combination would actually create more room on the grid than data centers need, helping support growing electricity demand from EVs and other sources.) If solar and batteries were deployed at a very large scale, Rewiring America says the cost could drop by 40%. That would make it possible for tech companies to invest in the equipment at roughly the same cost as building a new gas power plant. In the nonprofits model, tech companies would pay for 30% of the cost of the new technology. Homeowners would pay the rest, and then get the benefit of cheap electricity and access to power if the grid goes out in a disaster. In hot climates, heat pumps can unlock significant grid capacity by replacing less-efficient air conditioners. Rewiring Americas calculations show that in Texas, upgrading air conditioners to heat pumps would create 3.9 gigawatts of capacity on the grid. Solar and batteries would add another 10 gigawatts, helping nearly reach the state’s planned needs for another 17 gigawatts by 2029. Of course, rolling out clean tech at homes at the scale envisioned here would be a major challenge. But the report argues that it could happen faster than alternatives; building a new gas plant, for example, can take several years because of supply chain shortages. Tech companies are also investing in unproven new nuclear tech that isn’t yet commercialized. In theory, a network of new heat pumps, solar panels, and batteries could be rolled out in months. It also could help data centers win more support in communities. “There’s been some recent polling showing that data centers are not very popular,” Wyent says. “Our perspective is that data centers are going to be built. So why don’t we try to make that as beneficial as possible to the communities where they will be built?”
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E-Commerce
It is a sad fact of online life that users search for information about suicide. In the earliest days of the internet, bulletin boards featured suicide discussion groups. To this day, Google hosts archives of these groups, as do other services. Google and others can host and display this content under the protective cloak of U.S. immunity from liability for the dangerous advice third parties might give about suicide. Thats because the speech is the third partys, not Googles. But what if ChatGPT, informed by the very same online suicide materials, gives you suicide advice in a chatbot conversation? Im a technology law scholar and a former lawyer and engineering director at Google, and I see AI chatbots shifting Big Techs position in the legal landscape. Families of suicide victims are testing out chatbot liability arguments in court right now, with some early successes. Who is responsible when a chatbot speaks? When people search for information online, whether about suicide, music or recipes, search engines show results from websites, and websites host information from authors of content. This chain, search to web host to user speech, continued as the dominant way people got their questions answered until very recently. This pipeline was roughly the model of internet activity when Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996. Section 230 of the act created immunity for the first two links in the chain, search and web hosts, from the user speech they show. Only the last link in the chain, the user, faced liability for their speech. Chatbots collapse these old distinctions. Now, ChatGPT and similar bots can search, collect website information, and speak out the resultsliterally, in the case of humanlike voice bots. In some instances, the bot will show its work like a search engine would, noting the website that is the source of its great recipe for miso chicken, for example. When chatbots appear to be just a friendlier form of good old search engines, their companies can make plausible arguments that the old immunity regime applies. Chatbots can be the old search-web-speaker model in a new wrapper. But in other instances, it acts like a trusted friend, asking you about your day and offering help with your emotional needs. Search engines under the old model did not act as life guides. Chatbots are often used this way. Users often do not even want the bot to show its hand with web links. Throwing in citations while ChatGPT tells you to have a great day would be, well, awkward. The more that modern chatbots depart from the old structures of the web, the further away they move from the immunity the old web players have long enjoyed. When a chatbot acts as your personal confidant, pulling from its virtual brain ideas on how it might help you achieve your stated goals, it is not a stretch to treat it as the responsible speaker for the information it provides. Courts are responding in kind, particularly when the bots vast, helpful “brain” is directed toward aiding your desire to learn about suicide. Chatbot suicide cases Current lawsuits involving chatbots and suicide victims show that the door of liability is opening for ChatGPT and other bots. A case involving Googles Character.AI bots is a prime example. Character.AI allows users to chat with characters created by users, from anime figures to a prototypical grandmother. Users could even have virtual phone calls with some characters, talking to a supportive virtual nana as if it were their own. In one case in Florida, a character in Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen, persona allegedly asked the young victim to come home to the bot in heaven before the teen shot himself. The family of the victim sued Google. Parents of a 16-year-old allege that ChatGPT contributed to their sons suicide. The family of the victim did not frame Googles role in traditional technology terms. Rather than describing Googles liability in the context of websites or search functions, the plaintiff framed Googles liability in terms of products and manufacturing akin to a defective parts maker. The district court gave this framing credence despite Googles vehement argument that it is merely an internet service, and thus the old internet rules should apply. The court also rejected arguments that the bots statements were protected First Amendment speech that users have a right to hear. Though the case is ongoing, Google failed to get the quick dismissal that tech platforms have long counted on under the old rules. Now, there is a follow-on suit for a different Character.AI bot in Colorado, and ChatGPT faces a case in San Francisco, all with product and manufacture framings like the Florida case. Hurdles for plaintiffs to overcome Though the door to liability for chatbot providers is now open, other issues could keep families of victims from recovering any damages from the bot providers. Even if ChatGPT and its competitors are not immune from lawsuits and courts buy into the product liability system for chatbots, lack of immunity does not equal victory for plaintiffs. Product liability cases require the plaintiff to show that the defendant caused the harm at issue. This is particularly difficult in suicide cases, as courts tend to find that, regardless of what came before, the only person responsible for suicide is the victim. Whether itsan angry argument with a significant other leading to a cry of why dont you just kill yourself, or a gun design making self-harm easier, courts tend to find that only the victim is to blame for their own death, not the people and devices the victim interacted with along the way. But without the protection of immunity that digital platforms have enjoyed for decades, tech defendants face much higher costs to get the same victory they used to receive automatically. In the end, the story of the chatbot suicide cases may be more settlements on secret, but lucrative, terms to the victims families. Meanwhile, bot providers are likely to place more content warnings and trigger bot shutdowns more readily when users enter territory that the bot is set to consider dangerous. The result could be a safer, but less dynamic and useful, world of bot products. Brian Downing is an assistant professor of law at the University of Mississippi. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
A few years ago, I received some news Id been longing to hear: The first book Id ever written received an offer from a publisher. My childhood dream of becoming an author looked set to become a reality. It was six oclock in the eveningthe ideal time for a celebratory drink with my colleagues. But I didnt tell anyone the news. I thought my excitement would be seen as bragging. So I kept my mouth shut. If only Id known about the concept of Mitfreude: a German term for the vicarious joy people can feel at anothers happiness. According to recent research, we are needlessly cautious about sharing good news, because we fear it will provoke boredom, irritation, or envy in others. Yet Mitfreude is surprisingly commonand sharing our happier moments can improve our mood, strengthen our relationships with our colleagues, and boost our reputation within our professional network. ‘Joying’ with someone Mitfreude (which literally translates as joying with) comes from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a man not typically known for a cheery worldview. And yet he once wrote: To imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the highest privilege of the highest animals. You could see Mitfreude as the opposite of Schadenfreude, our joy at others misfortune. Studies confirm that there are many benefits to joying with another person. In the psychological literature, Mitfreude is often known by the more technical term capitalization: the idea that we can amplify our happiness from a positive event by sharing it with people we like. We can see this in studies tracking day-to-day changes in peoples emotions. After a conversation in which one person recounts a success or good fortune, the speaker gets to relive the positive experience while the other person enjoys a vicarious mood boost. Crucially, the warm feelings that arise also strengthen social bonds. In close relationships, it fosters trust and intimacy, explains Trevor Watkins, an assistant professor of management at the University of Oklahoma who has examined capitalization in the workplace. Sharing our successes can also enhance our reputation with our peers: Among coworkers, it offers the opportunity to foster inspiration, he says. The result is an amplification of our initial happiness: We derive even more benefit from the positive events than if we had let them passively come and go, says Watkins. Thats why its called capitalization. Unfortunately, many of us do not recognize these benefits. So we tend to keep our happiness to ourselves. How concealing positivity can backfire In a survey by Annabelle Roberts, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, her research team found that 80% of participants reported having concealed a success from people around them, like a promotion at work. Participants wanted to avoid provoking jealousy or creating awkwardness in a conversation. They thought they were being sensitive. In reality, it is the act of hiding a successand blocking opportunities for Mitfreudethat is most likely to elicit bad outcomes. Roberts and her colleagues asked participants to consider the hypothetical story of two work friends who are both looking for a new job: One gets asked to give a presentation to a potential employer, but neglects to tell his friend, despite them having discussed their job hunts. There could be multiple explanations for his behavior (including sheer forgetfulness), but the participants saw it as an act that erodes trust. As a result, the participants responded that they would be far less likely to share personal information about themselves with such a colleagueor to collaborate with him in the future. Sharing positive things about ourselves does a lot for connection, says Todd Chan, who conducted research into the benefits of perceived bragging for his PhD at the University of Michigan. Its not that people forget that friends might be happy for them. Its more that theyre disproportionately focused on the risk of things like envy. In reality, close friends mostly do feel joy for us. How to share joy (without bragging) Mitfreude can have caveats: Watkins has found that sharing good news is far less likely to bring vicarious joy in competitive workplaces, where it can breed envy and resentment. Fortunately, the research offers some tips to increase the chances that you will meet Mitfreude rather than envy in any situation. The first is the law of reciprocity. Lukasz Kaczmarek, who heads the Social Psychology Centre at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznañ, Poland, has shown that people often keep note of the ways that you have responded to their good news. This then shapes how theyll react to good news of your own. Conveying that enthusiasm will return to you as a boomerang, Kaczmarek says. Every time you show that your behavior has changed, it produces a change in your partner. Where possible, you might also attempt to build up others alongside yourselfa strategy known as dual promotion. You might compliment someones organizational skills while describing your creative contributions to a project, for example. The fact you’ve said something good about someone else shows that you must be a warm person, says Eric VanEpps, an associate professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University who conducted this research. Finally, you might try to talk about some of the challenges youve faced. In a study of entrepreneurs presentations, people who described past obstacles or mistakes were considered to be less conceited, and more inspiring, than those who spoke only of their triumphs. With time, greater awareness of Mitfreude and its benefits may help us all to create a more positive culture. Shying away from sharing good news creates like a void that then just is cluttered with bad news, says VanEpps. It’s nice to hear good things happen to good people.
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E-Commerce
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