Herbst Fellows 2023

The Energy Approach to Environmental Issues

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 22:20:22 +0000

The Energy Approach to Environmental Issues Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 15:20

Percy Smith

Introduction

Many members of Generation Z who are interested in assisting in the fight against climate change have found themselves at somewhat of a crossroads. The issue is that no matter where we end up, there are a million different interconnected problems, all of which contribute substantially to habitat destruction, plastic pollution, air quality issues, climate change, and infinitely many more issues. To illustrate the problem, I created the following issue-map to depict a couple of the major issues plaguing the environmental crisis.

Clearly, the issues (even when oversimplified) are tightly interwoven. There is almost no singular issue that does not, at least partially, bleed into another. However, the most broadly impactful issue in this figure is that of climate change. Climate change is an extremely broad topic which is caused by an extremely large range of factors, but which is principally perpetrated by carbon dioxide emissions.

If we look at the red tiles in the aforementioned chart, many of these energy problems can be solved with better technology or systems. These issues are ones which hold real possibility for engineering solutions. That is why it is so crucial that we as engineers focus on the energy side of environmental issues, because it is one of the most achievable paths towards progress in the fight against climate change.

Energy & Electricity

When viewing energy-use and electricity production, it is important to differentiate between the two. I will primarily focus on electricity generation, which focuses almost entirely on industrial electricity generation as well as rooftop solar. There are really two main categories of electricity generation: fossil fuels and alternative energy sources. For our fossil fuels, I will examine coal, oil and natural gas. Alternative energy sources, on the other hand, splits into renewable and depletable resources, however due to dissent surrounding the classification of sources in these categories, I will simply examine them as a whole. For our alternative sources, the United States has seen nuclear, hydropower, wind and solar as its strongest competitors. Although the world has seen emergence in geothermal energy production, specifically in Iceland, I will not discuss that in detail in this paper, (Ministry of the Environment Energy and Climate, n.d.).

Fossil Fuels (Coal, Oil & Natural Gas)

To begin with the pros, Fossil Fuels are one of the more energy efficient means of creating energy. Coal in particular remains extremely energy-dense, and natural gas cogeneration plants have been able to reach near 60 percent efficiency in energy production (Friedland & Relyea, 2015). Fossil fuels are resources, therefore, they are economically extremely flat in terms of consumer cost. Even then, there has been technological innovation in the field that has allowed for the capital gain to increase anyway. Keeping a relatively low and stable cost is helpful to maintaining a good economy (Naam, 2022). Additionally, fossil fuels are a really accessible form of energy. In developing countries, burning fossil fuels is one of the primary sources of energy. It’s arguably extremely unfair to pull the foundations of development in third world nations while they are finally able to catch up. Finally, fossil fuels are an energy source that we are comfortable with. We have been using fossil fuels for an extremely long time. This means that we know a lot about the health impacts, we know how to use the fuels, we know how to introduce them to the market, and our current grid operates on an assumption that fossil fuels are being used for energy production. Additionally, it is important to remember that the grid was designed for fossil fuel electricity generation. This means that it is going to be the easiest method of producing electricity with our current grid system, thus why it is so important to consider methods of providing energy in a stable capacity to support our grid.

Moving into the cons of fossil fuels, the primary problem lies in emissions. Fossil fuels are notorious for releasing pollutants into the atmosphere and environment that are known to contribute to health problems and climate change. Coal in particular remains extremely dangerous, releasing sulfur dioxide, toxic metals (mercury and lead), and remains the highest emitter of CO2 of all energy sources (Relyea & Friedland, 2015). Additionally, these fuels are difficult to contain. They are prone to seepage and contamination at many different steps of their refinement, transport, and burning. Although this is regularly documented with oil through oil spills and coal with acid mine drainage, natural gas has been known to leak as well with equally severe results. In 2015, California had a huge leak at a natural gas storage well, called the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Leak/Well Failure. This leak was the largest in history, releasing 97,100 tons of methane before the company was able to notice and contain it. Shifting to economics, fossil fuels, gasoline in particular, are prone to instability in their pricing. The cost has remained at a near-constant baseline on average (Statista Research Department, 2023). When viewed in tandem with the economic model of renewables, fossil fuels have already started to lose in cost to renewable alternatives (Naam, 2022).

Hydroelectric Power

Jumping into hydroelectric power, let’s start with the pros. Hydroelectric is one of the most popular and reliable forms of renewable energy production. It not only produces electricity but can also act as a flood-prevention device, or to create recreational spaces like reservoirs. This gives it both recreational and infrastructural utility, something that no other forms of energy offer. In addition, it’s extremely stable in its production of electricity which is crucial in finding ways to create a stable grid in the face of a renewable transition. Due to its stable nature, it remains a very popular source of energy when it is possible to construct, and one which we understand very well due to how long we have utilized it. Further, it is low cost to run for a similar reason. It doesn’t really need a ton of maintenance in comparison to other electricity plants, because it is self-sustaining once installed barring any extenuating circumstances.

There are, however, cons to this form of electricity as well. The most obvious of these cons are geographic limitations. Dams are obviously very dependent on a water source, and when we need to construct them, it is important to ensure that there will be enough water, and that the water will not displace important infrastructure when installed. Construction of a dam is also extremely time and labor intensive, making it difficult to consider when focusing on a quick transition to alternative energy sources.

Furthermore, there are hidden costs to building dams which we can illustrate with the following example. The Hoover Dam is composed of “4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete,” which when converted into a mass is a whopping 8,720,000,000 pounds of concrete, (Bureau of Reclamation et al., 2015) & (CEMEX, n.d.). Considering that approximately 0.9 pounds of carbon dioxide is released for every pound of cement, this would have resulted in 7,848,000,000 pounds of CO2 released during the construction of the Hoover Dam from concrete alone (Ramsden, 2020). Hydroelectric power also produces thermal pollution, which when released back into rivers, lakes, or ponds, has been found to kill a vast majority of the native wildlife, (Relyea & Friedland, 2015). Thermal pollution is a result of wasted heat that is absorbed by the water in the energy-production process. This is really dangerous, because to a sensitive marine environment, a few degrees Fahrenheit can be the difference between comfort and death. There is also the rather upsetting fact that hydroelectric dams have “a history of flooding tribal lands” (Stevens, 2023a). There are numerous instances of Native villages and food-sources being destroyed through the production of dams. In 1953, Congress allowed the US Army Corps of Engineers to begin construction of dams along the Celilo Falls for an increased power demand in the Pacific Northwest. These dams flooded the Celilo Falls trading grounds, of which were extremely culturally significant to tribes as “far away as the Dakotas, Alaska, and Northern California,” who would travel all the way to the grounds to trade (The National Museum of the American Indian, 2018). Additionally, it disrupted the migration patterns of the salmon on which native people primarily depended on as a food source despite treaties guaranteeing the sanctity of the fishing sites.

Wind

Wind turbines have made impressive strides over the past few years, especially with the further development of offshore wind farms. Leading with the pros, offshore wind turbines have a lot of potential in the United States and are doing quite well in windy areas. Additionally, there have been a lot of developments in integrated installation of turbines. To install these turbines over farmland would be one of the most effective ways to use land-based wind energy. In areas like Wyoming, Nebraska, or Kansas, this would work especially well considering the wind speeds of the region and the amount of space used for agriculture or cattle alone. They also don’t produce any emissions after installation, which is definitely important. They have also remained competitive in terms of upfront cost, and don’t require excessive amounts of upkeep to allow them to work. Wind is also a non-depletable resource meaning that there is no way for us to run out of wind in the manner in which we run out of fossil fuels. This makes it an important long-term competitor in the energy industry.

Wind, however, is not necessarily a constant resource. With the amount of variation in wind speeds and presence, it is much too erratic to be able to sustain the current grid by itself. Additionally, although turbines are often supported in theory, fewer voters have been shown to support construction of turbine and wind projects in their area. When polling voters, the Washington Post found that although 90 percent of Democrats were in favor of constructing wind turbines, only 81 percent supported the construction of those projects in their areas. Turbines are notoriously “ugly” and loud, and are often targeted by “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) campaigning in more affluent regions of the U.S. (Stevens, 2023b) & (Arthurs, 2021). To make matters more complicated, these NIMBY campaigns also delay the construction of wind turbines which are approved by governing bodies (Motavelli, 2021). Wind is great in theory, especially in specific geographic applications, but difficult in deployment in practice despite that.

Solar (Photovoltaic Cells)

The solar energy industry has been booming lately. With how many corporations offer at-home solar installations, it was bound to become popular in suburban America, especially with the decreased cost and increased efficiency. Solar panels also are a lot safer to install and maintain considering that they do not have huge moving parts whose failures spell disaster. Additionally, they are able to integrate into the landscape of homes without too much interference in small applications, specifically through rooftop solar. They remain subtle and quiet, unlike the less-popular wind turbines. They are also increasingly effective as battery technology has improved alongside panels.

However, solar also has cons to rival the other energy forms. Photovoltaic solar cells are extremely resource intensive. Many of the rare-Earth metals present in the panels are mined in dangerous conditions and in the face of increasing scarcity. These metals are also extremely toxic in nature, which means that there is a high risk in having them mined, especially in the third world, which is where a lot of these toxic chemicals are mined from. There is also the fact that solar cells are extremely far away from the energy source which they feed from. This means that weather variation, or even partial interference of the direct sunlight can cause the panels to keep from charging to their full potential. In our driest areas, where solar panels work the best, this coverage can even take the form of dust covering the panels, and interfering with the efficiency of the cells, (Nixon, 2023). In plant applications, there is also the issue which comes with variability in the hours. Peak solar harvesting occurs around mid-day, which is difficult because the peak electricity hours are later in the day and sometimes after the sun sets. This requires a lot more area to be covered with panels to cover for this discrepancy.

Nuclear Fission

Moving into the most controversial form of energy production, we have nuclear energy. This is a difficult source to parse, because nuclear power is a polarized and stigmatized energy source. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2020 on the public opinion of nuclear energy to demonstrate this. In this study, they found that approximately 45 percent of U.S. adults are in favor of constructing more nuclear power plants with 51 percent opposed and 4 percent with no opinion. Interestingly, the same study found that 65 percent of scientists in the American Association for the Advancement of Science were in favor of constructing more nuclear power plants with only 33 percent opposing and 2 percent with no opinion, (Rainie, 2020). However, public perception of nuclear power has started to shift. Many prominent environmentalists have come out in support of nuclear energy in the last few years. A few news outlets claimed this to be as a result of a more urgent concern for carbon emissions which required a shift in priorities, (Mark, n.d.).

Unlike the previously explored energy sources, we will begin with the cons of nuclear energy, because some of them are directly addressed with most of the presented pros found in reports. One of the biggest problems with nuclear energy is the production of waste. About 75 percent of Americans are concerned about the waste disposal as related to nuclear waste (Speiser & Hill, 2021). This is not necessarily due to the quantity of waste produced, but the dangerous nature of the waste and the lack of plan for the disposal of the material. According to the EPA, “there is currently no permanent disposal facility for high level waste. HLW must continue to be stored at commercial reactors and selected DOE facilities,” (EPA, n.d.). There has been some progress in this front with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which supports the use of repositories underground to store hazardous material, (EPA, 2022). Even so, there is still “about 88,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel… stranded at reactor sites, and this number is increasing by some 2,000 metric tons each year,” (Macfarlane & Ewing, 2023). This is concerning, because a year after the U.S. passed legislation indicative of progress in disposal of hazardous materials, there is still an incredible amount of waste still on commercial sites. The second most common concern is that of health and safety in nuclear energy production. Looking at Chernobyl and Fukushima which are the two worst nuclear meltdowns in history, there is obviously concern for safety when nuclear energy production is involved. In the face of earthquakes, poor maintenance, safety violations, or even minor accidents, there could be an incredibly high toll for relatively small mistakes. Additionally, some papers have found that there is omission of on-site accidents in nuclear energy production, claiming that “thousands upon thousands of small events - but with the potential to cascade into larger ones - remain unreported” (Wheatley et al., 2016). This is obviously incredibly concerning. We know that radiation and radioactive waste are dangerous, especially after long-term exposure, but it is difficult to quantify the true effects of minor accidents on the workers of the plants. Also, when we do find an off-site storage space for waste products, what about the people who have to transport the hazardous material? To transport the waste in an armored vehicle is still incredibly dangerous considering the possibility of car accidents or terrorist attacks along the way. Third, there is a lot of concern about the security and weaponization of nuclear resources that might be proliferated by nuclear energy. According to some, “the materials, technology, and expertise needed for [Uranium] enrichment can be used to both generate nuclear power and develop nuclear weapons,” (World101, n.d.). This is, again a valid concern, especially with the renewed threat of nuclear weapons as brought on from Russia due to the war in Ukraine.

Some of the less prominent concerns include the very high upfront cost. The timeframe of construction alone makes it expensive, but in addition to that, the technology and Uranium are expensive to purchase and develop. There is also concern over the time constraint as mentioned previously. The median time to construct a nuclear plant, as of 2021 was 88 months, or just over 7 years, (Statista, 2022). This is often cited by environmentalists as too late to help in the fight against climate change, (Jacobson, 2022). Additionally, nuclear energy is not technically renewable. Uranium is of limited supply and thus is prone to running out eventually. It also requires mining to be done rather extensively to retrieve the resource to begin with, which as we discussed in the solar section, is concerning in third world countries.

Moving to the pros of the issue, nuclear energy is by far the most efficient form of electricity production to date. Last year, the United States used 4.05 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity. If all of that electricity were supplied by nuclear power, that would occupy only 469 square miles of land, beating out the footprint of all other sources of energy by over one-thousand square miles (Stevens, 2023b). The waste product of nuclear energy as well is rather small in scale. It is a much denser form of waste, in that it is much smaller in volume and larger in mass. The volume is small enough that as of 2009, if all of your lifetime electricity was produced with nuclear, the waste would fit inside of a coke bottle, (Brand, 2009). This statistic was also taken before the smaller and more effective nuclear power plants were starting to enter the market, meaning that it could be an overestimate. Additionally, there is no emission waste, and all of the electricity-specific waste products are self-contained and closely tracked and monitored, (Relyea & Friedland, 2015). This form of electricity is shown to be incredibly stable as well, making it a competitor in the current electric grid system. This is a necessary trait to be able to replace fossil fuels as a “backup” source of power needed in case of extreme weather conditions that disarm wind or solar production. In fact, in the United States, the states with the “cleanest” power generation have been heavily reliant on either nuclear or hydroelectric energy (Stevens, 2023a). To expand on previous concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation, prominent environmentalist Stewart Brand claims that “in terms of proliferation, nuclear energy has done more to dismantle nuclear weapons than any other activity,” (Brand, 2009). This quote is specifically referring to the Megatons to Megawatts Program, which allowed for 20,000 Russian nuclear warheads to be converted to U.S. electricity over the course of 20 years. (US Department of Energy, 2013). This meant that “one in ten American lightbulbs [were] powered by dismantled Russian nuclear weapons” making this one of the “most successful nuclear nonproliferation partnerships undertaken,” (Wang, 2023). The facilities are also extremely highly regulated and secure due to tacit understanding of the dangers faced with nuclear fission processes. Since the terrorist attacks in September 2001, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has increased safety requirements, giving NRC-regulated facilities their reputation as “among the most secure of the nation’s critical infrastructure,” (US NRC, 2019).

Environmentalist Pressures & Issues in Policy

Climate change is no longer a far-off problem. According to the most recent Global Climate Report, 2022 was 1.55 degrees Fahrenheit above the global average (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], 2023). Although the causes of weather variation are debated across scientific papers, it is especially clear that there has been increased polarization of climate patterns across the globe, (Gates, 2021, pp. 24–33). The figure supplied by NOAA depicted above shows some of the severe weather events which occurred in 2022, (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], 2023).

Even as the horizon of the climate crisis draws closer, we are not progressing enough to stall or mitigate the issue. The carbon intensity, which measures the kilograms of CO2 released per million BTUs of energy, has only dropped from 59 to 49 in the United States over the last 20 years, (Stevens, 2023a). There is also an increasingly polarized divide between proposed paths to a carbon-free electric grid. People tend to weigh pros and cons very differently across the board. Where some environmentalists are especially anti-hydroelectric due to habitat disruption, others are primarily anti-wind due to the casualties of birds who fly into the turbines. Additionally, there is a lot of debate in the scientific community over creating an accurate prediction model to better understand what we have to do to meet the demands of the climate crisis. Some scientists expect global energy demand to decrease over time, and thus are optimistic about the present renewable technologies and their ability to meet demand, (One Earth, 2020). There are still many that disagree with this, expecting to see a huge increase in electricity demand to account for developing nations among a litany of other reasons, (Gates, 2010).

These internal disagreements have divided the environmental movement and slowed climate action in politics. There is no consensus on where to go next, even though there is a common goal: to decrease carbon emissions and allow for a safer future. Even under the recent push for alternative energy development and funding, there has still been an incredible amount of disagreement over how we do this. Most prominently, there is a huge push for wind and solar as the two are popular alternatives to traditional fossil fuels. However, there has not been as much of an effort to alter the infrastructure of the grid to accommodate, (Lynas & Bradford, 2012).

It is for these reasons that I find it fair to say that two of the biggest issues in American energy right now are: transitioning to alternative energy sources and creating a stable grid to accommodate. These issues go hand-in-hand, and if we are to consider the broader picture of these problems, there is a good chance that we could lay out a proper framework to solve both.

However, with the current divisions plaguing the environmental movement, we have not seen the change that we need to be able to combat the climate crisis. There has not been a change in accountability for corporations, or for countries who do not care to cut their carbon emissions. Worse yet, corporations and politicians are able to scrape by with a falsified interest in alternative energy sources, only to maintain the current electric system in policy and practice.

Energy-Based Solutions

While working to create a better climate, it makes the most sense for engineers to work on solving energy-specific issues. As we mentioned previously, divisions between environmentalists has created stagnation in climate activism. This stall allows for coal and natural gas to maintain their position in the market as backups for variability in solar and wind energy production, (Blunt, 2022). If policy and public opinion is primarily in favor of solar and wind, we will see issues with intermittent energy production due to the structure of the grid. This is a huge problem because the main method of combating blackouts from weather variation is importing electricity. Due to the structure of the grid in the United States, it is extremely difficult for us to transport electricity over long distances and to neighboring states, meaning that if we were to import electricity from neighboring states, it would primarily be with fossil fuels.

CO²=P*S*E*C

Above is an equation used by Bill Gates in his TED Talk: Innovating to Zero. This equation details how carbon emissions are affected by many different variables, (Gates, 2010). The P in this equation is for population, which is increasing. The S in this equation stands for “services per person” which is also increasing. However, this is good because it indicates that the standard of living has been improving, especially in the developing world. The E is for energy, which has actually been decreasing due to an increase in efficiency of energy production. This is also a good thing, but it is primarily canceled out by the increase in S and P sections of the equation. This is why Bill Gates argues that we should shift our focus to C: CO2 per energy unit. He challenges, in the talk, for us to innovate our emissions down to zero. When we ask what that entails in the electricity sector, Gates goes into detail in the chapter titled “How We Plug In” from his book How To Avoid A Climate Disaster. These developments include updates to the US grid system, further development of carbon-free energy sources, innovation in energy storage options, carbon capture and decreased usage of electricity and energy, (Gates, 2021, pp. 66–97). This is obviously a big challenge, but if we are to focus ourselves on creating a stable, carbon-neutral grid as Mr. Gates has described, our CO2 emissions will no longer be an important part of the equation. If we are to do this in the US we have to consider huge infrastructural projects to update the grid or an integrated approach to alternative energy sources (Blunt, 2022) & (Gates, 2021, pp. 66–97).

Selling Points of Alternative Energy Sources

There are a number of benefits to alternative energy sources, but for them to succeed in persuading the public of their applicability, they have to be able to appeal to more than one set of priorities. That is why I discuss alternative energy sources in terms of economics, health, and welfare perspectives.

Primarily, alternative energy sources will win the economic battle against fossil fuels. This is previously addressed in the fossil fuels background, where we detailed the resource-based cost models. Basically, fossil fuels have been subject to rise and fall in their costs over a short term. However, when viewed over the last twenty years, the average cost of fossil fuels has remained relatively constant, (Statista Research Department, 2023), (Roser & Our World in Data, 2022) & (Naam, 2022). Additionally, the costs for renewable energies have decreased over time, much more akin to what we would expect in technological economic models, (Naam, 2022) & (Roser & Our World in Data, 2020). Viewing the chart to the right, we can see that in 10 years, the drop in price of photovoltaic solar electricity has outpaced all other forms of electricity production, with the only real competitors in price being gas and onshore wind. Nuclear is the only alternative source that did not see a drop, but this is likely because of the increase of regulations surrounding nuclear plant construction, (Roser & Our World in Data, 2022). We can see that with coal, the competition with wind and solar is no contest economically, and with the slopes of other alternative energy sources (excluding nuclear) we may have reason for optimism for an economic incentive to make a renewable switch.

Additionally, there are inherent health benefits to switching to renewables. As depicted in the figure above, the safest and cleanest sources of energy intersect despite the fact that the model includes freak accidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the Banqiao Dam failure in its fatality calculations. To view these numbers fairly, this model does so in relation to energy produced. Otherwise, because fossil fuels have existed for a very long time, they would vastly outnumber the deaths as attributed to other sources. Even still, solar, nuclear, wind, and hydropower all remain relatively safe, not breaching two deaths per terawatt-hour of electricity produced. Coal and oil, on the other hand remain more dangerous, with coal’s 24.6 deaths per terawatt-hour and oil at 18.4 deaths per terawatt-hour (Ritchie & Our World in Data, 2020). Other sources estimate that fossil fuel air pollution kills one in five people, (Chaisson, 2021). Air pollution is an incredibly dangerous side effect of fossil fuel combustion. The remedy to this is to remove fossil fuels from electricity generation to create a safer and pollution-free environment.

There is also the matter of public welfare to be considered. As of 2021, there were an estimated 754 million people who did not have access to electricity (Cozzi et al., 2022). Many of whom reside within South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. These are the same people who are likely to suffer the most from climate change (Gates, 2021). UN Administrator Kemal Dervis says it best, “while developing countries have contributed the least to the problem, they are expected to bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, which threatens to jeopardize many of the developmental gains that have already been achieved,” (Dervis, 2007). With the increased need for electricity in the modern age, it becomes incredibly important to supply developing countries with electricity to aid in their developmental progress. Yet when so much of the developing world does not have electricity, and many developed countries ask for them to do so in a sustainable manner, they are prone to being left behind. Even with the promising development of off-grid solar electricity, Sub Saharan Africa is still leading in the number of people without access to electricity, (Inamdar, 2017) & (Ritchie et al., 2020). Through further development and production of accessible off-grid electricity, we will be able to help millions of people achieve electricity production and allow for them to do so in a manner which is conducive to a clean environment, (Inamdar, 2017). Through solar especially, there is incredible potential in many sunny developing regions to harness electricity in a safe manner. This has the added benefit of protecting these people from further acceleration of climate change while simultaneously aiding in their development through electricity generation, which has become a necessity in today’s age.

Proposal

Now that we have discussed the background, the problem, and the plan to move forward, we have to lay out what it is that we have to do now. Right now, the public has become increasingly focused on pushing solar and wind energy. The issue is that we are struggling to create good batteries that are able to account for the intermittency of the most prominent alternative energy sources. Due to the nature of the grid, as we previously mentioned, it is extremely difficult to replace fossil fuels through intermittent forms of energy. Through the increasing prominence of wind and solar especially, we threaten to create an even more unstable grid by relying on power sources that do not meet the fossil fuel baseline. It is an unfortunate fact that “in practice, electric grids with lots of wind and solar, such as those in California and Massachusetts, often rely on carbon-emitting natural gas plants that can quickly ramp up generation to fill in the gaps,” (Stevens, 2023a).

The issue is not solar, nor is it wind, it is the thought that there is an “easy solution” to one of the most complex issues that science currently faces. If we were to roll-out solar and wind on a massive scale, even if we rely primarily on offshore wind to stabilize, we still stand the risk of leaving out the land-locked states. Look at Colorado, we have extremely variable weather conditions, and are not privy to a close offshore wind farm. Although about 25 percent of our electricity comes from wind, we still rely heavily on coal and natural gas with their combined 69 percent of our electricity generation. Although our carbon intensity has been dropping, we are 40th in the nation, arguably because of the coal that we still rely on. Colorado’s best option to reduce emissions further would be to use nuclear if we plan to generate the electricity in our own state, (Stevens, 2023a). Otherwise, we risk continuing to rely on coal, and then in the future relying on natural gas. Both of which release greenhouse gasses and carbon dioxide.

From my perspective, there are two possible paths to solving this issue: either we restructure the grid, or we stabilize renewables while we make our energy transition. Due to the cost and scope of completely restructuring the grid, not to mention the political nightmare that is implicit in campaigning for the funds and the proposal in general, it seems easiest to create a stable transition. This is why it is crucial that we add stabilizing electricity plants throughout the grid. Whether that is in the form of our previously discussed forms of electricity generation: hydroelectric or nuclear, or in up and coming technologies like: geothermal, offshore wind, tidal, etc. If we interweave these electricity generators throughout the grid, we allow for a reliable source of stable energy. This is critical for areas that would otherwise struggle with only solar and wind. These should act as our stabilizing forces. Nuclear fission, although extremely controversial, is one of the only options for stabilizing the grid nation-wide. Bill Gates, in How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, writes, “Here’s the one-sentence case for nuclear power: It’s the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season, almost anywhere on earth, that has been proven to work on a large scale,” (Gates, 2021). The United States is a huge and geographically diverse country. Wind and solar energy will not work across the nation as a blanket solution. Even hydroelectric power is geographically dependent, and with issues of drought and water-rights throughout America, it is also not a blanket solution. Nuclear energy, if done correctly, is a very widely deployable energy source which enjoys extremely high energy efficiency. It produces electricity in a manner that allows it to compete with fossil fuels in a clean manner, and thus we have to take it into consideration while we fight the extremely urgent problem of CO2 emissions.

When we encounter parts of the grid which may be lacking in wind and solar potential, it would be especially prudent of us to consider these regions to require a different electricity source. That might require nuclear, geothermal, or hydroelectric support. There are many regions which do not enjoy the bountiful sun that is available to the southwestern United States, as we can see in the figure above from NREL. And there are just as many regions that do not see wind speeds on par with the Midwest or the coastlines. We should make sure that in allowing for pushing of solar and wind, that we are not also getting rid of nuclear plants until stability through other means are possible. Instead, we should focus our efforts into removing carbon-based fossil fuels such that we can mitigate the carbon emissions, because nuclear does not release carbon.

Of course, there are valid concerns with these forms of electricity production across different regions. For example, we should not focus on building nuclear plants on the southeastern coast on account of hurricane seasons and tropical weather risks. Although we have already done this, it has been known to result in tragedies like Fukushima which involved a nuclear meltdown that was triggered by a tsunami and earthquake. There is concern for using geothermal in regions where drilling can result in volcanic or tectonic disruption. There is difficulty when constructing dams for hydroelectric power and how that threatens inter-state relations over water supply related sensitivities. It is why the energy side of climate change mitigation is not solvable by a single blanket solution.

Viewing the above figure, it’s very clear the United States operates on a patchworked electric grid. This figure shows all of the different electric regions, demonstrating the unnecessary divisions across the states. Assuming that the grid was to stay relatively similar in structure, it would make the most sense if we were to identify the available alternative resources in each region and add in stabilizing plants to mind the gap between renewables and fossil fuels. The U.S. grid is a poorly designed system which relies heavily on instant electricity production. Although this is only a minor problem with fossil fuels, we still see outages in extenuating circumstances, whether that be natural disasters, weather effects, or even an unexpected increase in demand on the electric grid. There needs to be a huge change in how we manage our electricity.

In Conclusion: No Easy Fix

Additionally, all of this speaks to a much broader concern which I see as central: we need to stop marketing an easy solution to the climate crisis, and by extension to this energy issue. As soon as we oversimplify the issue, there are a huge amount of people that begin to push for the easiest solution instead of the correct one. As long as technology and electricity remain central to our nation’s functionality, we should consider technological literacy when voting our representatives into office. It is important that we consider problems as complex and critical as this one at the level which the problem necessitates. To oversimplify the issue will only harm our approach to a solution by pushing an “easy” fix instead of a correct one. Additionally, in jumping over critical details, we run the risk of breeding fear in those who do not understand the topic instead of a desire to fix the issue. With climate change, and electricity, it is common to hear extremely gloomy predictions for the future instead of calls to action. This is a solvable problem, but it will not make progress as long as we are paralyzed into inaction by the fear of the issue, instead we have to take action and work on the problem as it requires. As engineers, it is crucial that those of us going into energy are careful about what we are producing. It is important for us to understand that there is not always a one-size-fits-all solution to our problems. It is only through our diversity of solutions that we will be able to combat this issue.

However, the biggest takeaway from this issue is that engineering is one of the most important means to mitigate the harm done by climate change. When we discuss welfare, health and economics, there is more that comes from the solution of alternative energy than reducing fossil fuel emissions. Although that is my principle concern, it also requires consideration of the other ways which the introduction of alternative forms of energy might destabilize the grid, and what other kinds of problems that we are missing in the fine print. There is a call to combat climate change, but that does not mean that we are allowed to overlook some of the minor problems in favor of one major. If we approach this with an integrated grid that uses all of our cleanest forms of electricity, we stand to benefit in more ways than just stopping climate change. But if we do this incorrectly, we could suffer from extreme weather even further. The choice is ultimately that of the nation, which means that we have to be willing to speak for the solution that we believe in to gain enough favor for real change.

Works Cited

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Neoliberalism: It’s Time to Engineer Our Way Out of This (Herbst Fellow Essay)

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 22:18:50 +0000

Neoliberalism: It’s Time to Engineer Our Way Out of This (Herbst Fellow Essay) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 15:18

Kristina Petrov

In almost every borough, suburb, and city block in America, quality of life is decreasing while cost of living is increasing. A stunning 69 percent of people can’t afford new median priced housing, driving over a third of American households to rent (United States Census Bureau, 2020). But the rental market is also deeply unaffordable, with the median asking rent soaring to over $2000 a month in May 2022 (Ellis, 2022). This leaves millions of people in very precarious positions, vulnerable to neighborhood changes they might otherwise be able to weather. In Boulder, Colorado, this is an all too familiar story. Colorado is one of the most moved-to states in the nation, ranking number four in 2020 (Wheelwright, 2021), but more recently more people are leaving than moving in, a shift driven by the unaffordable housing market, with home prices rising as quickly as in New York and California (Weis, 2022). Colorado is now one of the least affordable places to live. The population influx to our cities has done us no favors – Denver’s rents are now almost 16 percent above the national average (Apartment List, 2023). This is a global trend. All around the world, people are flocking to cities, and by 2050, an estimated 68 percent of people around the world and 89 percent of Americans will live in urban environments (United Nations Population Division, 2018). How we develop them at this stage, both physically and politically, will set the tone for the coming decades as we move forward into a rapidly changing world. It’s important we, as engineers, examine the social context we’re entering into, and since the 1970s and 1980s, that’s primarily been a neoliberal one.

Neoliberalism shouldn't be confused with "socially liberal" or left of center politics in the United States. Rather, it’s an economic and political approach to governing and policy characterized by three main components. The first is privatization of the public sector – think clean water for profit, the medical insurance industry, and homeowners associations paving roads and such rather than local governments. The second is deregulation of the corporate market – this is pretty easy to see in our tenant protections or, rather, our lack thereof. The third is the lowering of both corporate and income taxes through government austerity – basically, it's cutting public spending and gutting social programs. Lack of investment in energy and transportation infrastructure, food assistance programs, and our public housing programs are some of the most glaring examples. Neoliberal approaches to development are those that place ultimate faith in the free markets to generate social improvement, relying on trickle down economics to deal with poverty (Riley, 2007, 3). It’s an ideology we know well here in America, famously made prevalent by the Reagan Administration in response to stagflation and a growing distrust in the government during the Cold War. The impact of those economic policies and the government's continued adherence to neoliberalism permeates almost every aspect of our society today, but is quite noted in our hubs of rapid development and our most socioeconomically diverse centers – cities (Peck et al., 2009, 57).

Let’s take a step back and explore how neoliberalism is impacting people right now through something a bit more tangible – rent. Here in Boulder, high rent isn’t exactly a new conversation. More than half of Boulder residents are renters, a number that’s only expected to grow due to how expensive home ownership is in Boulder (RentCafe, 2023). Unfortunately, only about 8 percent of rental housing in Boulder is considered affordable– defined by the city of Boulder as costing less than a third of your income a month (City of Boulder, 2021). One potential way to make housing more affordable is through rent control, or by regulating how much rent can actually cost. The main goals of policies like this are to keep rent affordable, increase neighborhood stability, and give people protection from being forced out of their homes by rent increases. There’s many different kinds of rent control, but one useful model is price control – regulating either how much rent can cost, or how much rent can increase each year. Because the share of Americans renting their homes is increasing, many communities are considering instituting some form of rent control, and because of this, there’s been an uptick in economists and sociologists studying the effects of rent control in states like New Jersey and New York and cities like San Francisco with established or newly instituted rent control policies. Others are studying the effects of a lack of rent control in cities like Boston, Massachusetts, which removed their rent controls in the 1990s.

None of these new studies have found any evidence that introducing or strengthening rent control decreases new housing construction, despite it being one of the central concerns surrounding instituting it. On the flip side, there’s also no evidence that removing rent control increases it either. While rent control’s effects on new development are clear, their effects on the amount of rental housing is still contested. There’s some evidence that suggests that the amount of available rental housing decreased as landlords converted their renter-occupied units to owner occupied ones (Sims, 2007). Still yet, there’s evidence of the opposite–that it increased the amount of rental housing by incentivizing landlords to subdivide their units (Gilderbloom & Ye, 2007). Regardless, what rent control has done is successfully keep rents low in the places it’s been instituted, while in the places it was removed, rents doubled on average (Mason, 2019). It’s also increased resident tenure lengths, leading to greater neighborhood stability, and keeping neighborhoods socioeconomically diverse. This enables people to live in the cities where they work. Rent control has also successfully prevented gentrification in the areas it's been instituted. With this protection in place, cities can undergo renewal projects without worrying about pricing out the very people they aim to help. All this isn’t to say it’s a miracle policy or a one-size-fits-all solution, alone it won’t be enough to confront the affordable housing crisis, but it is a powerful asset in our political toolbox.

Unfortunately, it’s one we have to do without. In 1981, Colorado enacted a statewide ban on rent control policies in response to a citizen initiative in Boulder to allow rent-stabilized housing–a more flexible kind of rent control (Sargent, 2021). Colorado is one of 32 states with similar bans preventing local legislatures and municipalities from permitting rent controls in their communities (National Multifamily Housing Council, 2022). Recently, there was a bill in the state senate to repeal this ban, HB-1115, but despite popular support–over 80 percent of young people aged 18 to 34 support allowing local legislatures to set rent controls–it still failed (New Era Colorado, 2023). Governor Polis has historically vetoed other bills aimed at instituting housing regulations, citing concerns about future development (Kenney, 2022).

Opponents to rent control primarily focus on the impacts that it could have on the developers, landlords, and property management firms involved. Among other things, they argue that instituting these controls would deter developers from building new homes. While that has been a consensus for decades, new studies have found no correlation between rent controls and diminished rates of new development, indicating that the issue is more nuanced than it seems (Mason, 2019). But even disregarding these doubts, from 1990 to 2019, the total number of rental units increased by about 13.3 million, while the number of rental units at the low end of the price range, under $600 accounting for inflation, fell by almost four million (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2020). New development isn’t going to solve the housing crisis if it’s all aimed at attracting those with money rather than those that need it. Additionally, opponents argue that being unable to raise the rent on an apartment discourages landlords from making repairs and upgrades to their properties, driving values down either way, and that it discourages people from moving, stalling out the rental market. Rent control policies, however, aren’t just strict price limits, and many account for how upgrades to an apartment change its fair market price (Mason, 2019). Investing in housing programs like Housing Choice Vouchers (more commonly known as Section 8) and expanding tenant protections to include repair standards and a right to a lawyer in housing court as well as investing in other needs to go hand in hand with rent control policies if we want equitable housing.

This resistance to rent control stems from a central misunderstanding of its goals. They’re not designed to create affordable housing out of thin air, and they’re not just to keep rents low–they’re supposed to foster community and recognize the interests of long term tenants to remain in their homes. They’re to keep neighborhoods socioeconomically diverse. We can’t continue to treat rental housing like it’s just a short stop on the way to homeownership because that is becoming increasingly untrue for young people. But this opposition is the neoliberal position. The assumption is that by regulating the housing market, we would be limiting it and its capability to house people. By limiting the economic market at all, we would be limiting its capacity for good.

But the goal of today’s market is profiting and pursuing so-called infinite economic growth. Whatever positive impacts it has on people are side effects, and its negative impacts are collateral damage. A neoliberal government inevitably prioritizes the wellbeing of corporations over the wellbeing of its people, purely by the nature of what neoliberalism is. If we measure success the way neoliberals do, we’ll only ever see how the industry is performing, not the impacts of our legislation and development on those most vulnerable. Neoliberalism has had an unforgivably negative impact on the economic stability and mobility of people, as well as on the social fabric of our communities. As engineers, we have an obligation to resist neoliberalism in our education and industry, and as a society, we need to seriously consider moving past it if we want to experience truly just development in our lifetimes.

Future engineers are entering an industry whose relationship with the people it most impacts is shaped by neoliberalism. There’s an exploding interest in global engineering, as well as racial and environmental justice, motivated by addressing very basic human needs and reckoning with a fundamentally unjust history. But the underlying condition in most engineering projects is an utter acceptance of capitalism and the free market, leading to blind acceptance of neoliberal approaches in development (Riley, 2007). Without a conscious resistance to neoliberalism that questions long term impacts and prioritizes the wellbeing of those impacted, it’s easy to end up working on projects that hurt the people they were designed to help. Because engineers are embedded in industry, they typically serve the ends of profit making, and it hasn’t been considered a professional duty to question those ends. Many big engineering aid projects have been launched both in the United States and in developing countries and many have failed. Urban renewal projects–like those in Jobbers Canyon, Ohio, LaVilla in Jacksonville, Florida, and Poletown in Detroit, Michigan–motivated by the goal of creating more jobs, often end up displacing locals and killing the local economy. But these failed projects leave us with opportunities to grow and potential case studies to learn from.

We need to change the way we appraise a project’s success, both in the short and long term, and to ensure that its motivations and ends are questioned throughout (Riley, 2007). The communities impacted should be involved with every step of the engineering process. Projects should be formulated in and organized by them, and industry responsibility simply cannot end when the funding does. Insurance should be provided so in the case that a project fails, those communities don’t get saddled with that debt. Projects should be sustainable and independent of the company–the community should be able to comfortably maintain it.

And as for educating future engineers, universities have a duty to their students to teach ethics in engineering. We need to learn about neoliberalism. If we want to produce multifaceted engineers capable of interacting with and maneuvering around a complex sociopolitical situation, the core economic system we exist in can’t be a blink-and-you-miss-it topic in classes. Engineering schools also need to develop specialized concentrations or degrees with an intersectional or global perspective on engineering. What we have here at ��񱦵�–the Mortenson Center–is a good start, but many universities don’t have intersectional programs to begin with. Additionally, there needs to be a critical analysis of the programs and organizations the university works with. Our study abroad and exchange programs are often limited by our intensive engineering curriculums that don’t emphasize understanding of political and economic systems, never leaving enough time to focus on cultural immersion. We need to launch more interdisciplinary programs for engineering students, with a focus on engineering ethics and an emphasis on working with social scientists. Their input is incredibly valuable and outside of our expertise, but too often fields like sociology and history are dismissed as unscientific or unimportant.

Outside of our technical work, we can advocate for the passing of policies that prioritize working people and marginalized groups. This means advocating for repeal of the prohibition on local residential rent control, as well as expanding tenant protections, like providing tenants a right to counsel in housing courts. One study in Denver found that less than one percent of tenants are represented in court while over 89 percent of landlords are (Hasvold & Regenbogen, 2016). In New York, after such tenant protections were instituted, evictions fell 41 percent (Office of Civil Justice New York City Human Resources Administration, 2020). We also need to change the way we talk about and treat housing, both politically and in the industry. Three of four Americans agree that housing is a human right, but that’s not reflected in our legislation or developments (Orth & Bialik, 2022). We need massive federal investment in housing assistance and the creation of much more affordable housing units. Right now, the City of Boulder has set a goal to increase the amount of affordable housing in Boulder to just fifteen percent in 2035 (City of Boulder, 2021). Frankly, that’s pathetic, and we can do a lot better. We need to reinvest in social programs and welfare systems en masse. We cannot continue to depend on companies who have no legal obligation to contribute positively to society to act as our safety nets.

Engineering doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Our projects will be built not in a blank plot of land, but in places with rich histories, within an industry with a difficult legacy. By working with communities to design projects that work for them and actively challenging our neoliberal biases and approaches in development, we can contribute materially to a better, more equitable world for everyone.

References

Ambrosius, J. D., Gilderbloom, J. I., Steele, W. J., Meares, W. L., & Keating, D. (2015, December). Forty years of Rent Control: Reexamining New Jersey's Moderate Local Policies after the Great Recession. Political Science Faculty Publications, 40, 121-133.
Apartment List. (2023, May). Average Rent in Denver, CO & Rent Price Trends. Apartment List.
City of Boulder. (2021, July 1). How Boulder is Working to Make Housing Affordable. City of Boulder. Retrieved May 1, 2023, from
DePillis, L. (2017, November 1). How Colorado became one of the least affordable places to live in the U.S. CNN Business.
Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2019, September). The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco∗. American Economic Review, 109(9), 3365-94. 10.1257/aer.20181289
Ellis, T. (2022, June 9). Rental Market Tracker: Typical U.S. Asking Rent Surpassed $2,000. Redfin.
Gilderbloom, J. I., & Ye, L. (2007, April 19). THIRTY YEARS OF RENT CONTROL: A SURVEY OF NEW JERSEY CITIES. Journal of Urban Affairs, 29(2), 207-220.
Harvey, D. (2007). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Hasvold, A., & Regenbogen, J. (2016). Facing Eviction Alone: A Study of Evictions. Colorado Center on Law and Policy.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2020). America's Rental Housing 2020.
Kenney, A. (2022, April 22). Rent control for Colorado mobile homes is doomed by Jared Polis veto threat. Colorado Public Radio.
Mason, J. (2019, November 26). Why Rent Control Works. Jacobin.
National Association of Home Builders. (2022, February 15). Nearly 7 out of 10 Households Can't Afford a New Median-Priced Home. National Association of Home Builders.
National Multifamily Housing Council. (2022, July 19). Rent Control Laws by State. NMHC.
New Era Colorado. (2023, March 13). A Majority of Young People are Rent-Burdened Across Colorado and Support Overturning the Ban on Rent Control. New Era Colorado.
Office of Civil Justice New York City Human Resources Administration. (2020). Universal Access to Legal Services [A Report on Year Three of Implementation in New York City].
Orth, T., & Bialik, C. (2022, May 17). Who do Americans blame for homelessness? YouGov.
Peck, J., Theodore, N., & Brenner, N. (2009). Neoliberal Urbanism: Models, Moments, Mutations. The SAIS Review of International Affairs, 29(1), 49–66.
Perry, G. (2019, April 16). What Would Rent Control Mean for Colorado? 5280 Magazine.
RentCafe. (2023, February). Average Rent in Boulder & Rent Prices by Neighborhood. RentCafe.
Riley, D. (2007, June), Resisting Neoliberalism In Global Development Engineering Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--2628
Sargent, V. (2021, February 1). Let Cities Decide: End Colorado's Prohibition on Rent Regulation – University of Colorado Law Review. University of Colorado Law Review.
Sims, D. P. (2007). Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control? Journal of Urban Economics, 61(1), 129-151.
United Nations (UN) Population Division. (2018, May 16). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. The United Nations.
United States Census Bureau. (2020). 2020 American Community survey, 5-year Estimate.Weis, K. (2022, December 29).
Affordability, politics among reasons for people moving within and out of Colorado, realtors say. CBS News.
Wheelwright, T. (2021, June 22). State of Moving in 2020: Moving Stats and the Impact of COVID-19. Move.org.

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ChatGPT is Forcing Us to Do Some Deep Reflecting: Are You Ready? (Herbst Fellow Essay)

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 22:09:55 +0000

ChatGPT is Forcing Us to Do Some Deep Reflecting: Are You Ready? (Herbst Fellow Essay) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 15:09

Mae Chen

People are freaking out about ChatGPT’s ability to generate complex and unique texts that can be hard to distinguish from human writing (Dale, 2020). With ChatGPT gaining 100 million users in two months (The Economic Times, 2023) and becoming the fastest growing consumer application in history, many people feel like AI development is coming out of left field and cannot help but to anticipate the AI apocalypse. For example, credible news sources like Politico, the New York Post, and The Washington Post have posted headlines like “Tracking the AI apocalypse” (Robertson, 2023); “Rogue AI ‘could kill everyone,’ scientists warn as ChatGPT craze runs rampant” (Cost, 2023); and “Opinion | ChatGPT might be the end of civilization” (Leibbrand, 2023).

Another pressing question many people have is “Will AI take over my job?” First of all, white collar jobs that involve processing data, writing text, and even programming are most likely to be affected. But to answer the question, I can see this going two ways: possibly yes and possibly no. Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, advocates for universal basic income (AI News Base, 2023) which makes us think he thinks the answer is, “yes.” On the other hand, affected doesn’t have to mean replaced. Instead of AI replacing lawyers, this could mean lawyers working with AI would replace lawyers not working with AI. (John Oliver, 2023).

However, asking if AI will take over isn’t productive. To figure out what we should do with AI, we must ask the question, “What does it mean to be human in the age of AI?” Before we discuss this question, let's first gain a better understanding of what exactly ChatGPT is.

ChatGPT: A Deeper Dive

AI research started in the 1950s, but its performance was not very significant. Until recently. After large language models (LLMs) were fed billions of parameters (texts and images from the internet), LLMs finally displayed intelligent behavior. ChatGPT is a LLM, and it is like a vast scrapbook created from a huge pile of snippets of text from the internet that it then glues together on demand (Heaven, 2020). ChatGPT’s acceleration in intelligence was unexpected. In 2022, OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 only scored in the 10th percentile of the bar exam, but, in less than a year, GPT-4 scored in the 90th percentile. However, ChatGPT is not truly intelligent.

There are two types of AI: narrow and general. Narrow AI can perform only one defined task while general AI demonstrates intelligent behavior across a range of cognitive tasks. An example of general AI would be J.A.R.V.I.S from Iron Man.

ChatGPT's only task is to generate text, so generative AI is narrow… for now. Mr. Altman’s ultimate goal is to reach general AI. In recent interviews, he has said general AI has benefits for humankind “so unbelievably good that it’s hard for me to even imagine.” However, be cautious in believing his words because he did also mention that general AI could kill us all (Roose, 2023).

ChatGPT’s Current Limitations

Regardless of how ChatGPT seems like it understands what it is saying, we must note that it actually doesn’t. When prompted for sources, it will provide fake articles that don't exist. This is caused by LLM’s learning of likelihood: when asked to provide sources, it produces a very likely title that a human would have written for that topic. Tellingly, AI spouting false information is called hallucinating (Johnson, 2022), and this poses a serious problem for the public good. Since everyone is using ChatGPT but are not aware of this limitation, we will believe the false information. Furthermore, GPT-4 is able to make false facts more convincing and believable than earlier GPT models. Thus, overreliance occurs when users excessively trust the model, leading to inadequate oversight (OpenAI, 2023).

As this Twitter and ChatGPT user has pointed out, we should be aware that ChatGPT can be misleading if not scrutinized.

Some limitations can be explained, but exactly what’s going on inside ChatGPT isn’t clear. Developers don’t fully understand how the massive amounts of data are being linked together, and they can't explain how ChatGPT’s unique results are derived. In addition, developers can’t explain why internet scaling allowed for ChatGTP’s intelligent behavior to emerge. This is like a black box. We’re able to see the responses AI is generating (the box), but we’re unable to see how the system is making its decision (what’s happening inside the box). So it is concerning to me that there is a black box problem happening here, but developers continue to create more black boxes as they release more LLMs applied to non language processing issues like predicting protein structures (Timmer, 2023). It is wonderful that LLMs are advancing science, but it would be more beneficial if we could follow along and understand how the LLMs are deducting their predictions.

Because ChatGPT learns off of billions of parameters, its scale also makes it harder for OpenAI to test every single test case. For example, GPT-4-early was observed to have serious safety challenges including harmful content and privacy problems (OpenAI, 2023). Intentional probing could lead to advice for self harm, hateful content, content for planning violence, and instructions for finding illegal content. In addition, GPT-4-early had the potential to be used to identify individuals with a large online presence if a user possesses outside data and then gives it to GPT-4-early (OpenAI, 2023). Being able to identify someone without their consent or even knowledge raises serious privacy concerns.

OpenAI implemented safeguards to mitigate these challenges, but again, they will most likely never catch all test cases and, therefore, never be able to create safeguards for them. However, creating safeguards can be problematic as well. Attempts to filter out toxic speech in systems like ChatGPT can come at the cost of reduced coverage for texts about marginalized groups (Welbl et al., 2021) Essentially, this safeguard solves the problem of being racist by erasing minorities, which, historically, doesn't put it in the best company (Oliver, 2023). Honestly, the list of limitations continues, but Big Tech continues to roll out more LLMs for commercial use. This is reckless and seriously threatens public safety.

Silicon Valley’s Irresponsibility

Even the decision to release ChatGPT early was rash. OpenAI’s original plan was to release GPT-4 after it was done with thorough testing. But before GPT-4 was ready, the company’s executives urged workers to release a chatbot to the public fast. They were worried that rival companies might upstage them by releasing their own A.I. chatbots before GPT-4, according to the people with knowledge of OpenAI. So they decided to dust off and update an unreleased chatbot that built on GPT-3, the company’s previous language model, creating GPT-3.5 (Roose, 2023).

Clearly GPT-3.5 didn’t go through the proper testing because it was released within two weeks. GPT-3.5 still produced biased, sexist, and racist text, but OpenAI wanted to be the first, probably for the money and power. If that was their goal with the early release, they achieved it. Because of ChatGPT, OpenAI is now one of Silicon Valley’s power players. The company recently reached a $10 billion deal with Microsoft and another deal with BuzzFeed. In addition, Mr. Altman has met with top executives at Apple and Google (Roose, 2023). OpenAI’s mission statement says that they will “ensure that artificial general intelligence… benefits all of humanity” and that generative models are safe and align with human values (OpenAI, 2023), but the company has seemed to become too profit driven, undermining its original spirit.

However, ChatGPT isn’t the only product that was released irresponsibly and reflects the culture of Silicon Valley. For example, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an experimental automated driving system by an Uber Advanced Technologies Group was deployed when the system did not account for jaywalking pedestrians yet; the system did not consider pedestrians as human if they were not walking on a crosswalk (National Transportation Safety Board, 2019).

Everyone knows the mantra of Silicon Valley is “move fast and break things”, but you would think they’d make an exception if their product literally moves fast and can break people (Oliver, 2023).

Why We Need Guardrails in Legislation

AI does have the potential to help humans achieve great things (that I will discuss later), but we urgently need legislative guardrails. If we are not careful, such progress might come at the price of civil rights or democratic values. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Computer Science Professor at Brown University and appointed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says “These technological systems impact our civil rights and civil liberties with respect to everything: credit, the opportunity to get approved for a mortgage and own land, child welfare, access to benefits, getting hired for jobs — all opportunities for advancement” (News for Brown, 2022). For such reasons, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has declared that the use of AI should be “transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering accountability.” OpenAI’s product GPT-4 satisfies none of these requirements, yet the FTC has taken no action (Federal Trade Commission, 2023). The Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy (CAIDP) recognizes how this lack of action could allow OpenAI to impact our civil rights, so they issued a complaint, demanding the FTC to act. In their complaint, the CAIDP states, “There should be independent oversight and evaluation of commercial AI products offered in the United States” (Federal Trade Commission, 2023).

Nonetheless, as the constant adoption of information technologies deepens the uncertainty of the future, it is less likely that traditional governance instruments will be adequate. Thus, we need to create frameworks using systems such as virtue ethics that are better suited to navigating uncertainty (Bauer, 2022). Like Aristotle’s eighteen virtues, Shannon Vallor recently proposed twelve techno-moral virtues, including humility, justice, courage, magnanimity, empathy, care, and wisdom. In her book Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting, Vallor argues the cultivation of these virtues will help individuals live well with AI (Bauer, 2022). If we can use such values to evaluate developmental AIs, we will increasingly ensure that AI aligns with substantive human values.

We may not have solid legislation yet, but guardrails build trust in the technology and allow innovation to flourish without fear of liability. In Venkatasubramanian’s testimony to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he says that to argue against guardrails is the same as “advocating for sloppy, badly engineered and irresponsible technologies that would never be deployed in any other sector.” (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2023).

The effort of national governments to develop formal frameworks for AI policy is a recent phenomenon, but the pace of AI policymaking is anticipated to accelerate in the next few years (Center for AI and Digital Policy, 2022). For example, a “Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” by Unesco came out in November 2021, suggesting how countries should start to evaluate AI. In October of 2022, the United States also created a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which was developed in consultation with not only agencies across the federal government, but also with the private sector, civil society advocates, and academics (Venkatasubramanian, 2023). As we continue to formulate our values, it would be most productive to ask, “What makes us human?” Then, we can better understand where we want to go with AI and start creating real legislation.

What makes us human in the age of AI? What is the human interest?

Like the discovery of the heliocentric system, AI will change the worldviews we live by, especially the modern experience of what it means to be human. Humans are no longer the only talking thing in a world of mute objects, and I cannot believe so few people are talking about the philosophical stakes of generative AI. According to Descartes’ “Discourse on the Method”, he considers language as a power only humans possess because animals cannot understand what our words mean, and it sets us apart in an exceptionally qualitative way from animals and machines (Rees, 2022). Because of language, humans are capable of reasoning and methods to elevate the mind. Now with OpenAI working towards general AI, there is a chance that this distinction between human and non-human will no longer be maintained.

In several cases, AI has benefitted human lives and the US government acknowledges this. In the “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” the White House says from “automated systems that help farmers grow food more efficiently and computers that predict storm paths, to algorithms that can identify diseases earlier in patients, these tools hold the potential to redefine every part of our society and make life better for everyone” (The White House, 2023). Another plus is that people have generated harmless videos for entertainment purposes like Youtuber Grandayy creating an Eminem song about cats (HAL-9000, 2023).

All jokes aside, if OpenAI is able to achieve general AI, where the system is genuinely capable of knowledge – remember current generative AI is only doing predictive analysis – language and intelligence will no longer be a reason to set us apart from everything else. For even further into the future, what if AI ever reaches the point of super intelligence? Super intelligence is a hypothetical agent where AI’s intelligence will far surpass human intelligence. It’s likely that not too long after general AI is accomplished, super intelligence will emerge. It may still seem well into the realms of science fiction, but AI could develop emotional intelligence as well. Machines would become capable of feeling emotions. Many people say connections and the ability to love makes us human, but if general AI, and thus super intelligence, is the direction we want to be headed in, we may create other sentient beings. Is this what we want? More specifically, can humanity even handle this?

Without a deeper discussion of what direction society should go in, legislation will not be able to help increase some certainty for the future. AI will only continue to accelerate. There must be a point at which we draw the line at, so we must be proactive to ensure we don’t hit the worst case scenario.

References

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Accessibility is a Major Component of Engineering Thus it Needs to be Embedded into the College of Engineering and Applied Science Curriculum

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 17:51:11 +0000

Accessibility is a Major Component of Engineering Thus it Needs to be Embedded into the College of Engineering and Applied Science Curriculum Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/03/2023 - 11:51

Julia Tung

Imagine the frustration felt being physically restricted from entering spaces intended for everyone; confusion on public transport because you don’t understand the local language; feeling the strain of your muscles as you hold a big box while trying to open a door; Struggling to open a pickle jar or hold a bar of soap in the shower. These are encumberments the disabled community faces daily, by living in a world not built to support them. As the builders of tomorrow, it is crucial that we learn to see our systems from different perspectives and understand the inherent biases of our worldview.

Currently, in the College of Engineering at CU-Boulder, students are rarely encouraged to design from diverse perspectives, let alone through a lens of disability. If CU’s mission is “to generate new knowledge in engineering and related fields and to equip students from diverse backgrounds to become leaders and citizens responsible for the betterment of individuals and society (Academic Affairs, 2022)”[1] then they need to teach students how to actively shift their perspective to that of different individuals within society.

Engineering at CU

Courses that teach ethics specifically for engineering undergrads are offered through the Herbst Program for Engineering Ethics and Society (ENES) but are not required for the completion of an engineering degree. The only place this track of learning can have in our schedule is through a certificate or in the 18 Humanities and Social Sciences credit hours needed for a Bachelor of Science at CU. In contrast, within the Creative Technology and Design (CTD) program, 6 credit hours of Critical Perspectives in Technology Electives (CPT) are required for degree completion. These courses help students develop theoretical perspectives and critical approaches relevant to technology (Critical Perspectives in Technology Electives, 2020)[2]. Outside the program, these courses can be counted for Humanities and Social Sciences credit. Having a diverse group of students is essential, but it is equally important that we are taught to think critically about how different people experience the same spaces. Technology is supposed to make humans’ lives easier either through transport, access to resources, productivity, social connection, etc. While going through the design process, it is important to think about the context your solution will be embedded in and who it will be used by. When engineers are working on a problem they are taught to assume they know the only, best solution. This perspective blinds them to how diverse groups of people will exist in the context of the application and the additional challenges that their solutions may create. This deficit of diverse input is especially apparent when looking at the functionality of accessible entrances and their directive signs.

I set out to find inaccessible designs on CU’s Boulder campus and I was disappointed by how easily I was able to find physical barriers to classrooms on a campus that boasts to be a center for innovation that positively impacts humanity. Figure 2 shows an entrance to the Duane Physics and Astrophysics building. There are multiple blue signs directing those in need of an accessible entrance, however, this sign is misleading because the entrance adjacent to the sign is not accessible. The closest entrance has a 4-inch change in level without a ramp or handrail. The sign is actually directing people to a door 100 feet down, as seen in Figure 3. I am very fortunate to never have needed an accessible entrance to enter the classroom and cannot imagine the frustration and discouragement the disabled community faces day-to-day trying to follow such ill-advised signage. This is grossly unacceptable for an institution that values innovation that positively impacts humanity. Simply changing the side of the door the sign is on would be more accommodating. While making an accessible entrance may seem intuitive, it is essential to understand how these small design decisions can cause harm to members of the community.

Engineering Fails

Historically, the world has not been structured to support those outside the norm. In the United States, we most often design for right-handed, able-bodied, white English speakers. In more recent years, disability inventions have become an exciting way to cater to a niche community, however, without insight from the target demographic, these devices can cause more harm than good. An example from the biomedical industry, specifically, is that there is limited research on the longevity of cutting-edge technology. One example of this is Second Sight, a prosthetic manufacturer for the blind. Second Sight sold retinal implantation Bionic Eyes that offered users artificial vision, a thrilling concept for those who wish to regain their sight. According to, Lucian Del Priore, one of the physicians involved in the clinical trials, “The idea that they were getting some kind of vision, it was kind of electrifying—for the patients and the doctors” (Strickland & Harris, 2022)[3]. While the idea was exciting, the practice was not profitable. Overhead sales and stiff compensation for in-house vision-rehabilitation specialists brought the company into bankruptcy. Without any notice, Second Sight canceled all updates and shut their system down, leaving users literally in the dark with a piece of obsolete technology surgically attached to their brains. Most patients opted not to get it removed due to the expensive and high-risk procedure. Second Sight provides a cautionary tale to those engineering for accessibility. Especially in the brain tech industry, it is important to think long-term about products. How can maintenance and promised services be performed and implemented to ensure the longevity of the device? This is a downfall because these pieces of new technology require a large amount of capital upfront that can be difficult to maintain and scale as the product becomes more popular. The need to find investors is a form of systemic oppression due to most corporations preferring to give their capital to causes that benefit the general population and not a specific demographic. Investors tend to see disability through the moral model and do not want to risk supporting a potentially controversial community. Often, there is a misconception that there is no market for accessible design, however, in the next section, I discuss why this misconception exists and is unfounded.

Disability History

According to the CDC [4], There are 61 million adults living with a disability worldwide. Various types of disabilities include mobility, cognition, independent living, hearing, and vision. To properly conceptualize designing for people with disabilities, we need to look at three different models for how people and institutions have defined disability in the past: moral, medical, and social. The moral model sees disability as having an impact on your character, deeds, and karma, often carrying stigma especially if the disability is seen as an indicator of wrongdoing. The medical model of disability defines it as something that needs to be fixed or cured in order to bring an individual as close as they can to “normal”. Finally, the social model sees disability as a part of one's identity, the fault lies in the existing attitudes and structures that discriminate against different abilities. The medical model places the problem on the person. In the social model, the problem is the assumption that everyone reads, moves, and understands the world around them in the same way (Olkin, n.d.)[5]. These assumptions overlook how disability is a natural part of the human experience. There is no true “normal.” To move forward as a society we need to stop medicalizing these differences and look at deficits in society and institutions that have been dehumanizing disabled people for centuries. Engineers create systems that align with their worldview, thus alienating a much larger part of our community. The problem solvers of tomorrow need to be better and follow the social model of disability to support and accommodate, instead of attempting to fix those different from us. It was not until 1990 that the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities [6]. In 2010, design standards were implemented with scoping and technical standards for state and local government facilities, public accommodations, and commercial facilities to be usable by those with disabilities (ADA Standards for Accessible Design, n.d.) [7]. These regulations for expanding the norm of inclusion are fairly new and acknowledge a hugely untapped market due to systematic denial of support for the “other”. There will continue to be limited research and foresight into the longevity of these products as they continue to exclude their target audience throughout the design process.

How Can You Succeed?

The most direct, reasonable, and successful way to engineer accessibility is to use qualitative methods-- ask people who experience disabilities what their barriers to access might be. They are important, yet neglected, stakeholders and should be consulted throughout the entire design process. Engineers should find disabled influencers and consume their content, listen to their stories, then reach out to them. They understand their disability better than anyone. However, it is important to remember that it is NOT the responsibility of these public figures to educate engineers on everything and anything accessible. Like able-bodied people, they can only speak on their personal experiences. There are also countless open-source online tools and resources to help as well. One effective tool for graphic design is Adobe’s Color Contrast Analyzer and the Colorblind Safe tool (Color Accessibility, n.d.) [8]. This site creates color palettes using hex codes and RGB values with accessibility in mind. Another feature is generating a color scheme from an uploaded file, which can then be checked for contrast and readability for those with poor vision. This can be especially useful in brand and logo creation. For digital works, the Web Accessibility Initiative created the Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG), a set of guidelines and recommendations to make the web accessible to people with disabilities. It breaks accessibility down into writing and presenting content, user interface, and visual design, and coding and notation (Initiative, n.d.) [9]. An example HTML validator is A11ygator, a Twitter bot and browser extension that “bites websites to taste their accessibility, created by the Chialab in Italy” (A11ygator, n.d.) [10]. The user inputs their domain which is validated against WCAG2AA guidelines then marks errors, warnings, and notices in the code. These guidelines provide normative technical specifications and follow the criteria of perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust design. While there are too many other resources to list here, many can be found on the Web Accessibility Initiative’s website. Historically engineers have followed the medical model of disability, trying to solve the “problem” and bring disabled people closer to normal instead of meeting individuals where they are. In general design, there has been a recent shift from the cost of disability innovation to the potential value it can bring to the community. Engineers should not be experts on disability, but it is imperative that they know how to think critically about the different humans entering the spaces they create. An easy way to keep this at
the forefront of development is to follow the Universal Design Process.

Universal Design Process

When designing something for public use, often the target demographic is the average user. In contrast, the Universal Design process focuses on people with a broad range of abilities rather than the average person. Some things to consider are different languages, reading levels, and physical abilities. The key is to think about the effective practices of spaces that already exist. Then identify the perspectives of different types of people and discover how they can work together based on the various needs of the space (UDL: The UDL Guidelines, n.d.) [11]. A sample demographic to look at is the needs of old people versus young people. You might ask:

Are the doors easy to open and signs easy to read?
Consider peoples’ reason for being in the space. Are they in a rush? Are they leisuring or is this their place of work?

Putting these questions into practice, if building a library, some previously successful design decisions would be having different study spaces and various noise levels to accommodate different types of work. Next, consider the different people who will use the space. This can be students, employees, customers, or they may be coming in to simply use the restroom. These people will have different levels of ability to see, hear, and manipulate objects. Think about the demographics of the area of implementation then integrate best practices of the space with Universal Design principles. Engineers need to shift away from catering to the norm and take a hard look at the needs of the entire community. This shift in perspective requires an institutional shift in learning. In order for CU to create leaders for the betterment of society we need to embed inclusive education and the Universal Design process into the curriculum. To engineer for accessibility does not mean investing large amounts of capital into technology for niche abilities, but making smaller design decisions that benefit different types of people. At the beginning of the design process, when engineers are defining the problem, the best practice is to also define the needs of the people. If the University of Colorado is invested in generating new knowledge to better society, a good place to start is amplifying the voices and perspectives that have been excluded by society. It is crucial that the university builds leaders who step out of their perspective and expand their worldview to the unique needs of those within their community. We need to expand the curriculum to engineer an accessible, and diverse problem-solving perspective.

Works Cited

References

As the builders of tomorrow, it is crucial that we learn to see our systems from different perspectives and understand the inherent biases of our worldview.

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