Tag: Technology

Electricity transmission towers

It may be almost impossible to make data centers pay their ‘fair share’ of electricity costs

Intersections

Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida (from The Conversation) Many major tech companies have pledged to pay their fair share of the costs associated with generating and transmitting more electricity to serve large data centers. But ratepayers across the United States are worried about the potential costs they might have to bear. That’s because it’s not immediately clear how the cost of data centers’ energy…

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Robot reading from a computer tablet

AI and Large Language Models: shortcomings and mistakes

Intersections

Large language models still struggle to tell fact from opinion “Large language models (LLMs) may not reliably acknowledge a user’s incorrect beliefs … The findings highlight the need for careful use of LLM outputs in high-stakes decisions in areas such as medicine, law, and science, particularly when belief or opinions are contrasted with facts.” (from TechXplore, November 4, 2025) Go to the source: *Suzgun, M.,…

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ai assisted code debugging on screen display

New technologies like AI come with big claims – borrowing the scientific concept of validity can help cut through the hype

Intersections

Kai R. Larsen, University of Colorado Boulder; Roman Lukyanenko, University of Virginia, and Thomas H. Davenport, Babson College (from The Conversation) Technological innovations can seem relentless. In computing, some have proclaimed that “a year in machine learning is a century in any other field.” But how do you know whether those advancements are hype or reality? Failures quickly multiply when there’s a deluge of new…

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Data Centers water use in 2023

Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much

Intersections

Peyton McCauley, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Melissa Scanlan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (from The Conversation) As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also…

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Is ChatGPT making us stupid?

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Aaron French, Kennesaw State University (from The Conversation) Back in 2008, The Atlantic sparked controversy with a provocative cover story: Is Google Making Us Stupid? In that 4,000-word essay, later expanded into a book, author Nicholas Carr suggested the answer was yes, arguing that technology such as search engines were worsening Americans’ ability to think deeply and retain knowledge. At the core of Carr’s concern…

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Negative impacts of smartphone and social media use on adolescent mental health

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*Capraro, V., Globig, L., Rausch, Z., Rathje, S., Wormley, A. S., Olson, J., … Van Bavel, J. J. (2025, May 15). A consensus statement on potential negative impacts of smartphone and social media use on adolescent mental health. PsyArXiv. [PDF] [Cited by] “The impact of smartphones and social media use on adolescent mental health remains widely debated. To clarify expert opinion, we convened over 120…

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Cartoon illustration of phubbing

Phubbing: psychology, harms, and more — more fallout from technology addiction

Intersections

Background: “Phubbing refers to the act of ignoring one’s immediate social interactions in favor of engaging with a smartphone” (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing). The word is a combination of “phone” and “snubbing.” Since the word was coined and the phenomenon became common from the early 2010’s, significant research on phubbing has taken place. Like many facets of our digital world where large for-profit corporations and governments work…

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Information independence!

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We live in a world awash with misinformation and disinformation. “Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.” Disinformation in particular, often leveraged through X, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, and created by political, corporate, criminal, and other bad actors besieges us on a daily basis. It’s a never…

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Facial recognition: technology and privacy

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“Facial recognition technology is increasingly used for identity verification and identification, from aiding law enforcement investigations to identifying potential security threats at large venues. However, advances in this technology have outpaced laws and regulations, raising significant concerns related to equity, privacy, and civil liberties. Facial recognition connects an image of a face to an identity or connects an image of a face to a database…

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AI, finding information, and surviving

Intersections

There is a vast amount of hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications. And there are valid concerns about the use of AI and its negative impact on our society. Like the long lineage of communication technologies that have preceded AI, human beings will use it–some for good (or at least with good intentions) and some to further crime, greed, corruption, and to gain…

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