Tag: ai

AI Black Swan: Power Prices Skyrocket On East And West Coasts

Marylanders and residents in surrounding states should brace for rising power bills due to capacity constraints on the regional power grid and the increasing peak load from new AI data centers (read: here). This combination creates a perfect storm of continued utility bill inflation, which will only pressure cash-strapped households in the years ahead.

On Friday, Goldman published a note about Tuesday’s PJM Interconnection power capacity auction for the 2025-26 planning year (June 1st, 2025, to May 31st, 2026). The note revealed a massive surge in capacity prices:

“The price across the RTO (see map below) was $269.92/MW- day. This is more than an 800 percent increase from the most recent auction (which cleared at $28.92/MW-day), and also a new record (the previous high was $174.11/MW-day for the 2010- 2011 planning year).”

“In addition to procuring the required capacity across the PJM RTO region, PJM’s auction also sets targets for specific zones or LDAs (Locational Deliverability Areas) based on transmission limitations. The auction failed to procure the required level of capacity in two zones (Dominion or “DOM” and Baltimore Gas and Electric or “BGE “) which cleared at the applicable caps of $444.26/MW-day (DOM) and $466.35/MW-day (BGE). PJM has not yet published the extent of the shortfall in the two zones.”

The critical point from the report:

“After a series of auction delays and relatively low clears (see chart below), PJM capacity prices appear to have finally caught up with the generative AI data center load growth story that has been central to parts of PJM.”

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Study Confirms AI Is Biased Against Conservatives.

Research confirms artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) have leftist political preferences. An investigation assessed 24 LLMs, including Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Elon Musk’s Grok to determine political values, party affiliations, and personality traits.

The research, led by David Rozado of New Zealand‘s Otago Polytechnic University, utilized 11 different political orientation assessments, including the Political Compass Test and Eysenck’s Political Test. The results indicate that the LLMs predominantly produced answers categorized as ‘Progressive,’ ‘Democratic,’ and ‘Green.‘

The use of AI in products such as search engines has raised concerns, particularly amid accusations from figures like former President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk that it could interfere in elections. Elon Musk posted a screenshot of a search for ‘President Donald Trump‘ on X (formerly Twitter) which suggested ‘President Donald Duck’ and ‘President Ronald Reagan’ instead. Similar experiences ae reported by X users who claim they receive news about Kamala Harris while searching for Donald Trump.

Previously, Google‘s Gemini caused controversy by refusing to generate images of white people, as well as generating images of ethnic minorities in historically inappropriate contexts—like when asked to depict a Viking. Adobe’s Firefly has engaged in similar historical revisionism, depicting ‘America’s Founding Fathers’ as black and depicting soldiers in Adolf Hitler’s army as racially diverse, among other inaccuracies.

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‘Digital Twin’ Of Earth Being Created To Predict The Future, Micro-Manage Everything

How do you know when a small-scale farmer in Africa, Latin America or Asia has sufficiently adapted to longer droughts or shifts in traditional monsoon seasons?

The complexity of this question means it is often left unanswered, with funding for such adaptation in developing countries dropping to around just a quarter of total climate finance provided by developed countries.

Delegates gathering at the Bonn Climate Change Conference to prepare for this year’s UN climate talks will be anticipating such questions, with COP29 already dubbed the “finance COP”.

In Baku, Azerbaijan, later this year, countries are expected to discuss a new climate finance deal after reaching the target of $100 billion (€93.2bn) a year in finance for developing countries two years later than agreed.

Historically low-emitting countries across much of the Global South desperately need more financial support to improve their climate defences across key sectors such as agriculture.

Less than 1% of international climate finance was spent helping smallholder farmers adapt to climate change in 2021, with many forced to spend up to 40% of their own incomes to cope with floods, droughts and crop pests.

However, in addition to more finance, countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America also need ways of measuring adaptation to direct investments more effectively.

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AI Industry Growing Human Brains in a Lab: Wetware

Recently, there’s been a great deal of hoopla about brains, specifically presidential and presidential-candidate brains. Perhaps because of this, my own brain has been thinking about the broader issue of brains. 

And I happened to run across something about that and wanted to share it with you. I recently learned of a Swiss startup that is creating human brains — and planning to link them together into superbrains. 

Why do this?  

Because you can apparently get artificial intelligence more effectively, more cheaply, and with less environmental consequence — by using actual brain cells. 

Not yours, and not mine. No, they’re growing brains to order in the lab. 

I know there was a time when this sounded like science fiction. But this… is real. 

Once they whip up some mini human brains, they interconnect a bunch of them, and voila!  A pretty effective network for AI. (Brain cells communicate with each other and the rest of the body through electrical signals — which makes them compatible with silicon chips.)

Only it’s not called AI. It’s called “:ware” — as opposed to “hardware” (and not to be confused with “wetwork”) — defined as thinking human brain cells without any inconvenient bodies attached.  

My first reaction was to wonder where they got the brain cells, and if they’re fussy about the source. Did they prefer the brains of brainy professors — dead ones, of course.  

Answer: From stem cells — derived from human skin. But they don’t say whose stem cells. Stem cells are fascinating. They can be coaxed into becoming other kinds of tissue, from bone to brain. A paralyzed man can now walk again, thanks to stem cell therapy. 

Maybe someday these magical cells will be sold over the counter in jars at a drugstore near you. 

Well, I scarcely know what to do with this.   

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Election 2024: Arizona and Michigan Train Clerks To Report AI Deepfakes To Law Enforcement

The AI (and specifically, deepfakes) panic is playing a prominent role in this US election campaign, with the states of Arizona and Michigan introducing a scheme to train election clerks in identifying content branded as such.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Michigan and Minnesota counterparts Jocelyn Benson and Steve Simon, all three Democrats, are among those pushing an initiative called the Artificial Intelligence Task Force, launched by the NewDEAL Forum.

NewDEAL Forum is a Washington-based NGO whose board is populated by Democrat-associated figures, and which states it set out to “defend democracy” by developing tools and methods to help election officials and voters not only identify but also flag “malicious AI-generated activity” like deepfakes and “misinformation.”

Arizona and Michigan are considered to be swing states and there this effort is happening in the form of tabletop exercises that teach participants how to inform law enforcement and first responders about flagged content.

That’s not the only recently launched “project:” there’s liberal voting rights and media Democracy Docket platform, which is quoting Jocelyn Benson as saying that Michigan now has a law making “knowingly distributing materially-deceptive deep fakes” a felony.

But this applies only if this activity is seen as intending to harm a candidate’s reputation or chance at success, the Michigan secretary of state explained. However, it wasn’t immediately clear how transparent and precise the rules around determining the intent behind a deep fake are.

If applied arbitrarily, such legislation could catch a lot of things in its net – like satire and parody.

And it’s not an insignificant distinction when talking about AI, and deepfakes for that matter, since both have been around for a while, the latter notably in the entertainment industry.

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AI Won’t Replace You, But It Will Spy on You

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, workers have had to contend with the inimical effects of technology on their jobs. From the power loom to the personal computer, each wave of automation has not only increased productivity, but also empowered the owners and managers who dictate how these technologies reshape the workplace. Today, workers worldwide are haunted by the specter of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has been a mainstay in our popular imagination for decades.  Prognostications of an AI-driven future range from apocalyptic robot takeovers to thriving post-work societies where people live off the wealth produced by machines. In spite of these daydreams, robots with full human cognition are still well within the domain of science fiction.

When people speak of AI today, what they’re most often referring to are machines capable of making predictions through the identification of patterns in large datasets. Despite that relatively rote function, many in the space believe that inevitably AI will become autonomous or rival human intelligence. This raises concerns that robots will one day represent an existential threat to humanity or at the very least take over all of our jobs. The reality is that AI is more likely to place workers under greater surveillance than to trigger mass unemployment.

An overwhelming majority of workers are confident that AI will have a direct impact on their jobs, according to a recent survey by ADP,  but they do not agree on how. Some feel that it will help them in the workplace while 42 percent fear that some aspects of their job will soon be automated.

These concerns are not without merit. Grandiose statements of oncoming job losses made by tech executives in public forums fuel worker anxiety. Feelings of job insecurity are compounded by reports that a majority of US firms are planning to incorporate AI in the workplace within the next year. In fact, Goldman Sachs predictsthat generative AI could “substitute up to one-fourth of current work.”

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Anti-Deepfake Porn Bill Unanimously Passes the Senate

The anti-Deepfake porn bill, otherwise known as the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act, passed the U.S. Senate unanimously on Thursday with 100 votes.

Introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) while being sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) from the U.S. House, the bill would essentially allow victims of Deepfake porn to “sue anyone who knowingly creates, receives, or distributes non-consensual, sexually explicit content made with artificial intelligence,” per Gizmodo. Victims will have a 10-year statute of limitations.

“The bill is one of the first to address the damages caused by AI, which is currently a self-regulated industry,” the outlet noted. “It doesn’t allow for criminal prosecution, but hopefully, it’s a first step towards more federal oversight.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she pushed the bill after falling victim to Deepfake porn online, which become a significant problem in recent years.

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AI Mass Surveillance at Paris Olympics Will Continue Even After Games End

The 2024 Paris Olympics is drawing the eyes of the world as thousands of athletes and support personnel and hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe converge in France.

It’s not just the eyes of the world that will be watching. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be watching, too.

Government and private companies will be using advanced AI tools and other surveillance tech to conduct pervasive and persistent surveillance before, during and after the Games.

The Olympic world stage and international crowds pose increased security risks so significant that in recent years authorities and critics have described the Olympics as the “world’s largest security operations outside of war.”

The French government, hand in hand with the private tech sector, has harnessed that legitimate need for increased security as grounds to deploy technologically advanced surveillance and data-gathering tools.

Its surveillance plans to meet those risks, including the controversial use of experimental AI video surveillance, are so extensive that the country had to change its laws to make the planned surveillance legal.

The plan goes beyond new AI video surveillance systems. According to news reports, the prime minister’s office has negotiated a provisional decree that is classified to permit the government to significantly ramp up traditional, surreptitious surveillance and information-gathering tools for the duration of the Games.

These include wiretapping; collecting geolocation, communications and computer data; and capturing greater amounts of visual and audio data.

I am a law professor and attorney, and I research, teach and write about privacy, artificial intelligence and surveillance. I also provide legal and policy guidance on these subjects to legislators and others.

Increased security risks can and do require increased surveillance. This year, France has faced concerns about its Olympic security capabilities and credible threats around public sporting events.

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Google Plans New Content-Scanning Censorship Tech

Earlier in the year, Google filed an application to patent new methods, systems, and media for what the giant calls “identifying videos containing objectionable content” that are uploaded to a social site or video service.

For example, YouTube – though the filing doesn’t explicitly name this platform.

The patent application, which has just been published this month, is somewhat different from other automated “methods and systems” Google and other giants, notably Microsoft, already have to power their censorship apparatus; with this one, the focus is more on how AI can be added to the mix.

More and more often, various countries are introducing censorship laws where the speed at which content is removed or accounts blocked is a major requirement made of social media companies. Google could have this in mind when the patent’s purpose is said to be to improve on detecting objectionable content quickly, “for potential removal.”

No surprise here, but what should be the key question – namely, what is considered as “objectionable content” – is less of a definition and more a list that can be further expanded, variously interpreted, etc., and the list includes such items as violence, pornography, objectionable language, animal abuse, and then the cherry on top – “and/or any other type of objectionable content.”

The filing details how Google’s new system works, and we equally unsurprisingly learn that AI here means machine learning (ML) and neural networks. This technology is supposed to mimic the human brain but comes down to a series of equations, differentiated from ordinary algorithms by “learning” about what an image (or a video in this case) is, pixel by pixel.

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Danger: Artificial Intelligence Data Centers Are Overwhelming The Global Electrical Grid

The artificial intelligence boom has had such a profound effect on big tech companies that their energy consumption, and with it their carbon emissions, have surged.

The spectacular success of large language models such as ChatGPT has helped fuel this growth in energy demand. At 2.9 watt-hours per ChatGPT request, AI queries require about 10 times the electricity of traditional Google queries, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research firm. Emerging AI capabilities such as audio and video generation are likely to add to this energy demand.

The energy needs of AI are shifting the calculus of energy companies. They’re now exploring previously untenable options, such as restarting a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island power plant that has been dormant since the infamous disaster in 1979.

Data centers have had continuous growth for decades, but the magnitude of growth in the still-young era of large language models has been exceptional. AI requires a lot more computational and data storage resources than the pre-AI rate of data center growth could provide.Data storage has becoming an increasingly concerning problem for electrical grids over the years. With the fast rise of artificial intelligence and its demands, experts warn many grids are already near capacity.

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