Tag: Taylor Swift

The Future Was Then: AI Moving Us Backwards on Carbon Emissions

Coal-fired power plant. Cost of data centers.

As the Super Bowl approached and passed, it seemed that one faction of Americans was accusing Taylor Swift of practicing witchcraft on the NFL while another was slagging her for the carbon output of her private jet—reportedly about 8,300 tonnes of CO2e in 2022. And although it is fair to expect owners of private aircraft to fly responsibly, I must ask this:  What is the environmental value of not shitposting about Taylor Swift? Or for that matter, any number of topics?

The carbon cost of a single tweet is ~.026g; the cost of X (nee Twitter) is estimated at 8,200 tonnes per year; and the overall carbon cost of social media is estimated at 262 million tonnes of CO2e per year. So, if we use this social media carbon calculator, it tells us that 1 million people spending just 2 minutes a day on the 10 major social sites costs just over 8,300 tonnes of CO2e per year—roughly the same amount T Swift reportedly generated with her airplane in 2022.

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I recognize that this is comparing the carbon footprint of one individual to a million individuals, but that one individual entertains millions and generates economic activity. By contrast, the social posts of a million people at any given moment are only making pollution in every sense. Clearly, it costs metric tons of carbon to produce metric tons of useless noise. And that preamble brings us to the topic of the projected increase in electricity demand for data centers to support advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). As Bloomberg reported in late January:

Electricity consumption at US data centers alone is poised to triple from 2022 levels, to as much as 390 terawatt hours by the end of the decade, according to Boston Consulting Group. That’s equal to about 7.5% of the nation’s projected electricity demand. 

In past posts about generative AI, I have opined that we do not need machines to make creative works—because we don’t—and that AI should be tasked with solving problems like curing disease or mitigating the climate crisis. On the second point, however, it seems that if an AI were asked the climate question, its only rational answer would be, “Shut me down.” If nothing else, AI could be an environmental catastrophe in the making.

“In the Kansas City area, a data center along with a factory for electric-vehicle batteries that are under construction will need so much energy the local provider put off plans to close a coal-fired power plant,” the Bloomberg article states. Because that quote cites both electric vehicles (EVs) and the data center, one must acknowledge that the environmental analysis of EVs entails a projection of carbon saved against carbon spent. But because a data center is pure carbon expenditure, that cost can only be measured against the value of the activity the center supports.

No question that data centers are infrastructure. There is no enterprise—private or public—that does not rely on networked computing, and economic activity almost always presents an environmental challenge, whether one is building a railroad or an eCommerce platform. But considering even the current energy demand, let alone the projected increase, AI pulls the issue into focus because so many of its applications are already either useless or toxic.

Useless, as stated, is the AI that generates “creative” work in lieu of the human creator, while toxic would be something like more advanced deepfakes exacerbating the disinformation crisis. Regarding the former, this flips the economic equation—i.e., carbon cost yielding lost jobs, which is arguably the opposite of economic activity. Regarding the latter, the use of AI to expand and deepen disinformation campaigns represents carbon cost in exchange for “better tools” that have already been used to weaken democracy worldwide.

In 2013, I wrote a post called Show Me the Innovation—one of many responses to the generalized argument that legal frameworks designed to protect intellectual property, privacy, information integrity, and even personal safety all stand in the way of “innovation.” The point then, as now, is that not everything produced by Big Tech is “innovative,” if we insist that word mean something. If “innovation” should improve lives and foster prosperity, isn’t it curious that social media’s carbon cost helps support anti-science agendas like climate change denial?

In a recent post about the environmental cost of data centers, Chris Castle cites Science Daily, noting that “generative AI like ChatGPT could cost 564 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity a day to run.” That’s more than some small countries. When coupled with the fact that data center demand is halting planned shutdowns of coal-fired plants, then it starts to look a lot like AI is helping to “innovate” the U.S. backwards, reversing the gains made over the past twenty years in carbon emissions.

Traditionally, it is possible to do a cost/benefit analysis. We burn x amount of coal to power y number of homes, or we need x amount of oil to run y amount of ground transportation. And even in the earliest days of electrification or automobiles, the benefits were self-evident. But with rapid advancements in AI, the cost is rising without clear evidence of benefit—at least not at the scale the electricity demand implies. This is because, like so many “innovations” of Big Tech, AI might be used to accomplish something extraordinary like improving medical diagnoses, but in the meantime, it will be used make what is already bad about digital life suck faster.

Photo by: dropthepress

NYT tech editor Jeong sticking copyright criticism where it doesn’t belong.

Holy whiplash segues, Batman.  There I was reading a perfectly interesting article by Sarah Jeong on the potential hazards of selling one’s personal data, when she took an incomprehensible—if mercifully brief—detour into the realm of copyright law.  She presents a reasonable enough case that the companies now offering to help us “broker” our private data (e.g. health information) may be counting on the fact that, “There’s no legal property right to personal data.  Once personal data is gathered, it’s out there for anyone to buy and sell. At the moment, there are no legal grounds to demand compensation for use,” Jeong writes.

Fair enough.  It is certainly true that the whole prospect of selling private data, even if it were a good idea, does implicate a relatively novel legal framework.  And while I am personally inclined to agree with Jeong that the whole notion is fraught with hazards, I am at a loss to understand where she is going with this interjection …

“In any case, we already know what happens when property rights get slapped on information, because we’ve already done it, to some degree, in copyright law. 

Giving people ownership of their creative expressions means they can buy and sell them on the open market. The risk is that an artist will wind up, like Taylor Swift, alienated from her own work because she no longer possesses the masters of some of her earlier recordings.”

Swift in late June stated publicly that she was very disappointed to learn that mega-star manager Scooter Braun will be acquiring Big Machine Label Group, which still owns her master recordings dating back to the start of her career.  Swift calls the prospect of being under contract to Braun her “worst nightmare,” and for the sake of this post, we will take her word that he is an “incessant manipulative bully” because digging into that backstory could not matter less to Jeong’s ham-fisted allusion to the supposed problem with copyright.  

Even more bizarrely, Jeong happened to pick an artist who has adamantly defended both her own rights and those of much smaller artists, and who told Rolling Stone in 2014, “Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.”  So, I’m just spitballing here, but maybe Swift did not recently do an about-face on the purpose of copyright, or even abandon all prospect of working with labels, so much as she was just saying she really does not like Scooter Braun.  

Turning to Jeong’s implications about the nature of copyright, it is clear that she should refrain from the topic altogether.  For one thing copyright does not “slap property rights onto information.”  Quite the contrary.  There is in fact a long history of statutory development and caselaw that makes it very clear that information is not the subject of copyright.  Expression is the subject of copyright, but the way Jeong slaps these two sentences together makes it seem as though information and expression are the same thing—especially in the context of an editorial that is all about data, which has no resemblance to expression.  

At that point, I guess what Jeong is trying to say is that if we can own and sell our data, then, like Taylor Swift and her masters, we could wind up very unhappy about the party that buys the data.  I think that disappointment is almost a guarantee and that we should be shoring up statutes against privacy-invasion rather than looking for ways to market our DNA profiles and whatnot.  But, that said, what in blazes does the unprecedented challenge of mass data collection and its privacy implications have to do with about three centuries (though I would argue more) constructing a legal framework for authorial rights?  Not a damn thing.

Interestingly enough, the paper written by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in 1890, which is widely considered the seminal American work articulating a right of privacy, actually turns to copyright law as starting point.  Because there is no constitutional declaration of a right to privacy Warren and Brandeis begin with the already long pedigree of copyright in unpublished works when they write, “From corporeal property arose the incorporeal rights issuing out of it; and then there opened the wide realm of intangible property, in the products and processes of the mind.”  

Not only do most people, and certainly most creators, still feel that the products of the mind are a form of personal property, but this was the exact point of reference chosen by a pair of legal lions to make the case that a right of privacy actually exists.  Consequently, Jeong might want to consider the possibility that copyright law provides guidance for the protection of our personal data rather than a warning of what can happen if we become the “owners” of that data.  Or, if we’re looking for warning signs in historic property rights regimes, my friend Neil Turkewitz observes …

“If property rights are the model, then Silicon Valley’s dismal track record on intellectual property rights is a giant red flag that simply vesting property rights is of little consequence to the extent that such property rights are essentially unenforceable — particularly for individuals. Since the dawn of the internet, notwithstanding their legal rights, creators and innovators have had to endure an avalanche of illegally available copies of their works online.”

So, maybe, as Warren and Brandeis noted, copyright does have something teach us about privacy that is quite different from Jeong’s misguided assumptions. But what do I know?  I’m just spitballing.

Is Taylor Swift a Strategic Guide?

Taylor Swift’s new album 1989 is the first and only to go platinum this year.  And the year is just about over.  At the same time, Swift is making headlines because her label Big Machine (a label she and her family own) has pulled all of her albums from Spotify and other streaming services.  As David Lowery’s artists rights blog The Trichordist has been pointing out this week, streaming company representatives and Internet industry cheerleaders have revealed some rather sexist overtones in their criticisms of artists like Swift, Adele, and Beyonce for their strategic decisions to restrict streaming of their tracks. Certainly, this kind of response is SOP by the brash, young boys of Silicon Valley, who like to tell everyone, especially silly girls, that they just don’t understand new business.  The arrogance of male money losers lecturing successful female entrepreneurs is something to behold, but let’s move on…

What I find particularly interesting are the lessons to be learned from the brief report on NPR this morning in which Sam Sanders describes Taylor Swift’s ingredients for success. I say this because all of the tactics employed by Swift are consistent with a marketing strategy that blends the best of the digital age with the best of pre-internet business models.  Taylor Swift does the following:

  • Create a product people actually want.  Check.  Clearly.
  • Connect with fans via social media.  Check. Swift is a long-time user of Twitter and responds directly and personally to her fans.
  • Promote like mad.  Check.  Swift is constantly self-promoting with live appearances.
  • Tour.  Yep.  Got it.
  • Give people a real reason to buy your product.  Check. Read on…

As Swift explains, 1989 did an exclusive deal with Target that has three extra songs and a unique photo collection.   This is a real-life example of the often vague suggestion that artists need to “add value” or “give consumers something they can’t get online.”  But right there is the trick, isn’t it?  Swift did add value by creating a limited edition CD with extra stuff for her most ardent fans, but the other component to get people to buy the album was — and this is really mind-blowing — to not make it available for free right away.  Genius, right?  This is not to say that infringers have not uploaded files from the album to YouTube, which is a whole other problem.  What this story really makes me think about, what I am always thinking about, is the middle-class band or singer/songwriter, partly because that’s where I think some of the best music is produced.  People can speculate all they want about whether Big Machine is providing  a guide to success for other major artists; but my question is what do artists do who aren’t quite so huge as Taylor Swift?

For instance, I recently discovered a band I like after attending AmericanaFest 2014 in New York City.  It was clear their fans had showed up because everyone crowded around me knew the lyrics to the songs, but I did wonder if these fans were album purchasers, streaming listeners, concert attendees, or all of the above.  I happen to know through an industry source who knows this band personally that they are very typical of the middle-class band today in that their album sales are a loss leader used to promote touring and that they have to tour constantly to make any kind of living.  This colleague explained, “This is one of those bands that’s just over that line of making a living, playing just big enough venues to make it work; go one notch below them, and you’re pretty much operating at a loss.”

Now, this band is doing more or less everything Taylor Swift is doing as well as everything the know-nothing web gurus tell them to do.  They use social media, sell tee shirts, tour constantly (leaving families behind); and of course they’ll never be as popular as Swift or Beyonce and are unlikely to get invited on the Today Show to promote a new album.  And that’s nothing new. But in a pre-internet market, this middle-class band would be doing pretty well, still working hard, but not operating quite so on the edge of survival.  And while nobody may care, they ought to for selfish reasons alone.  Because the longer a band like this continues to work, perform, and experiment, the higher the probability is that both they and society will be the beneficiaries of some new song or album that becomes a favorite hit that lasts for decades.

There are hundreds or thousands of artists who match the profile of this band, and if all of them are surviving (or not really surviving) on touring and merchandise alone, their days of playing are likely to be more limited than their predecessors simply because they’re mortal.  Album sales are a form of passive income, and passive income translates into time — time to spend writing a new song or experimenting with a new sound rather than booking a tour or approving the design for another stupid tee shirt.  So the question is whether or not a band this size should take a page from Swift’s playbook, pull or limit its tracks on streaming services and effectively force, rather than beg, their fans to buy CDs or digital downloads or even vinyl?  Would there be the backlash against the artists that so many predict?  I sometimes wonder.  Certainly, the owners of Spotify and Pandora would like us to think so.  But of course, if the options are zero income or mere drippings from streaming that don’t sustain, more than a few artists may be willing to find out.