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Daily Archives: February 16, 2023

How does an EV battery actually work?

MIT Technology Review: “Are lithium batteries sustainable enough to fulfill the dream of the electric-car revolution? The batteries propelling electric vehicles have quickly become the most crucial component, and expense, for a new generation of cars and trucks. They represent not only the potential for cleaner transportation but also broad shifts in geopolitical power, industrial dominance, and environmental protection. According to recent predictions, EVs will make up just over half of new passenger car sales in the US by 2030. One estimate suggests that the potential growth of the global battery market could require 90 more facilities the size of the Tesla Gigafactory to be built over the next decade. Lithium-ion batteries, also found in smartphones, power the vast majority of electric vehicles. Lithium is very reactive, and batteries made with it can hold high voltage and exceptional charge, making for an efficient, dense form of energy storage. These batteries are expected to remain dominant in EVs for the foreseeable future thanks to plunging costs and improvements in performance. Right now, electric-car batteries typically weigh around 1,000 pounds, cost around $15,000 to manufacture, and have enough power to run a typical home for a few days. While their charging capacity degrades over time, they should last 10 to 20 years…”

Microsoft and the unreliable AI chatbot

Futurism: “Microsoft has finally spoken out about its unhinged AI chatbot. In a new blog post, the company admitted that its Bing Chat feature is not really being used to find information — after all, it’s unable to consistently tell truth from fiction — but for “social entertainment” instead. The company found that “extended chat… Continue Reading

Worsening climate shocks risk distracting from efforts to reduce carbon emissions, creating ‘doom loop’

“The world is entering a more difficult stage of the climate and ecological crisis where its symptoms are drawing attention away from efforts to tackle its root causes, according to a new report published by the IPPR and Chatham House think tanks. Huge resources are being deployed to respond to the growing number of climate… Continue Reading

Publishers Want to End How Libraries Lend Books Online

Medium: “When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families. The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared… Continue Reading

How Google Ran Out of Ideas

The Atlantic – The company thinks it’s an innovator. In fact, it’s an imitator—and not the best one, either. By Cory Doctorow. “Microsoft is making a desperate play. Having spent billions on a search engine that no one uses, the company has sunk billions more into equipping it with the chatbot technology ChatGPT, on the… Continue Reading

ChatGPT Amendment Shows the EU is Regulating by Outrage

Center for Data Innovation, Patrick Grady February 13, 2023: “The EU is considering placing generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, in a “high risk” category in its upcoming AI bill, thereby subjecting such tools to burdensome compliance requirements. This sloppy addition needlessly stunts creativity and shows the EU is hitting the panic button… Continue Reading

Annual Transparency Index Links Corruption with Increased Violence Globally

“The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), released yesterday by Transparency International, concludes that 95% of countries have made little to no progress fighting corruption since 2017.  This 21st edition of the index ranks 180 countries and territories by experts’ perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very… Continue Reading

Replication Data for Organizations Involved in Humanitarian Action: Introducing a New Dataset

Egger, Clara; Schopper, Doris, 2022, “Replication Data for: Organizations Involved in Humanitarian Action: Introducing a New Dataset“, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/52GFWC, Harvard Dataverse – “Although the humanitarian sector has gained prominence in the management of contemporary conflicts, data on the diversity of organizations involved in humanitarian aid are scarce and do not rely on well-founded inclusion criteria. This… Continue Reading

Major international law firm is using an A.I. chatbot to help lawyers draft contracts

FT.com via Fortune via Yahoo: “Allen & Overy is introducing an artificial intelligence chatbot to help its lawyers draft contracts, as the magic circle legal firm seeks to adopt the much-hyped technology to find efficiencies for its lawyers and clients. The London-based group told the Financial Times it had rolled out a chatbot named Harvey… Continue Reading