<div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">
<span><b>The Institute for Ethics in Public Life invites you to
join us for "Ethical Issues with AI", Wed., Feb. 12, at 3:30pm with special guests Dr. Del Hart,
Dr. Kevin McCullen, and Dr. Jan Plaza of the Department of Computer
Science.</b></span>
<br><span><br></span><div style="margin-left:40px"><span><span><span>The rapid increase in the capabilities of
generative artificial intelligence has continued since our last
conversation on the issue. Most recently, "reasoning models" such as
OpenAI's o1 and DeepSeek's R1 have been released. These can answer
harder, more complex questions and they take the time to basically
"think through" the question and check their work before responding,
thus reducing the error rate as compared with non-reasoning models (like
ChatGPT). </span></span></span><br><span><span><span> </span></span></span><br><span><span><span>While
R1 does not require as much computing power to run as o1, nor is it as
energy intensive to run, reasoning models still raise many ethical
issues starting with the hardware and energy demands necessary to train
and operate them. AI firms continue to invest in new data centers, and
so far this is resulting in large increases in the energy consumed for
AI purposes. One anticipated impact of AI-related investment in
computing is that the total energy consumption of global data centers is
expected to more than double between 2022 and 2026, from 460
terawatt-hours (TWh) to more than 1000 TWh. This is likely to make the
green energy transition more difficult due to the increased demand for
power, and these data centers will both generate a lot of waste heat and
will require a lot of fresh water for cooling. Google's data centers
used 4.3 billion gallons of fresh water in 2021 alone, and the newest
data centers are larger and generally require more water - up to 5
million gallons per day (the same as a town of 50,000 people). The fact
that many of these data centers are located in areas that are prone to
drought just makes this issue worse.</span></span></span><br><span><span><span> </span></span></span><br><span><span><span>The new AI models also
require a lot of data to train on, whether it be text, images, or
sounds. In many cases so far they have been trained on data publicly
available on the internet. While publicly available, much of the data
used is protected by copyright laws and thus its use for training AIs is
questionable ethically, to say nothing of its possible illegality.</span></span></span><br><span><span><span> </span></span></span><br><span><span><span></span></span></span><br><span><span><span>Another
issue with AIs is accuracy and bias. The reasoning models have one
major advantage over non-reasoning models in that they are able to
explain how they came to their conclusions. This, combined with the
lower error-rate associated with these models, means it is less likely
that they will make errors that are not noticed or understood.
Nevertheless, there are still questions about who has liability for any
harm that results from their use, and so far there remains a potential
for bias in their responses due to biases that exist in the data used to
train them. </span></span></span><br><span><span><span> </span></span></span><br><span><span><span>Finally,
there are real questions about what impact AI will have on society. AI
is already starting to disrupt sectors of the economy, and this impact
is going to keep growing for as new AIs come online. Will this transform
society into one in which a small elite is able to exploit the
capabilities of AI to enrich and empower themselves while the majority
of society is relegated to relative poverty, or will access to AI serve
to democratize the economy and spread prosperity? And how can we
adequately prepare our students to ethically use these new tools, as is
required by the new SUNY GE standard? </span></span></span><br><span><span><span></span></span></span><br><span><span><span></span></span></span><span>Daniel Lake is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Topic: "Ethical Issues with AI"</span><br><span>Time: Feb 12, 2025 03:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)</span><br><span>Join Zoom Meeting</span><br><span><a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://plattsburgh.zoom.us/j/82723290647&sa=D&source=calendar&ust=1739551347740273&usg=AOvVaw06zp0OD8J39N7acpnFiyta" target="_blank">https://plattsburgh.zoom.us/j/82723290647</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>Meeting ID: 827 2329 0647</span>
</div></div><br clear="all"></div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">Upcoming:</div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">Feb. 19 - Nothing scheduled, due to a workshop at the same time.</div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">Feb. 26 - Local government and politics during a time of high political polarization with Matt Veitch '94, Supervisor, City of Saratoga.</div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="gmail_default">You can also see upcoming events on the Institute's <a href="https://www.plattsburgh.edu/about/centers/ethics-in-public-life/programs.html">Program and Events webpage</a> or add the <a href="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/1?cid=Y19sa245c3MxcjdscjExdmM0ZzNtMDlyaDUyb0Bncm91cC5jYWxlbmRhci5nb29nbGUuY29t">Institute's public calendar</a> to your Google Calendar. <br></div><br><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><b><font size="2">Daniel Lake</font></b></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2">(pronouns: he/him/his)<br></font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2">Assoc. Prof. of Political Science</font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2">Director, Institute for Ethics in Public Life<br></font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2">Hawkins 149A</font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2"><a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=101+Broad+Street+Plattsburgh,+NY+12901&entry=gmail&source=g" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">101 Broad Street</a></font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2"><a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=101+Broad+Street+Plattsburgh,+NY+12901&entry=gmail&source=g" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Plattsburgh, NY 12901</a></font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><font size="2">(o) <a href="tel:(518)%5645833" value="+15185642217" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">518-564-5833</a></font></p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Arial"><b><font size="2"><a href="http://plattsburgh.edu/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">plattsburgh.edu</a></font></b><br></p></div><div dir="ltr"><img src="https://web.plattsburgh.edu/files/914/images/SUNY-Plattsburgh-Email-Logo-2018.jpg"><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>