By Kate Saenko
Dec 15, 2020
This month, Google forced out a prominent AI ethics researcher after she voiced frustration with the company for making her withdraw a research paper. The paper pointed out the risks of language-processing artificial intelligence, the type used in Google Search and other text analysis products.
Among the risks is the large carbon footprint of developing this kind of AI technology. By some estimates, training an AI model generates as much carbon emissions as it takes to build and drive five cars over their lifetimes.
I am a researcher who studies and develops AI models, and I am all too familiar with the skyrocketing energy and financial costs of AI research. Why have AI models become so power hungry, and how are they different from traditional data center computation?
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Robotic Fish Built by UMass Researcher Mimics Fast Acceleration of Live Fish Modeled after the Northern pike, the robot is made of 3D-printed plastic components and mimics the fast-start response of live fish
December 15, 2020
Robotic Fish
AMHERST, Mass. – A robotic fish designed and built at a research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst can accelerate up to 20g, an acceleration comparable to the fastest live fish that has been measured so far. No other robotic fish has achieved such acceleration. The research was recently published in
“The very large acceleration that some species of fishes can achieve during their escape maneuver has long fascinated the researchers,” said Yahya Modarres-Sadeghi, professor of mechanical engineering. “We asked ourselves, could we make a robot that is as fast as the fastest live fishes?”
Viral Encounters: Lessons on COVID, Coping and Community from Chinese Migrants in Italy UMass Amherst anthropologist Elizabeth Krause finds the “threat of xenophobia, a preparedness to quarantine, and the will of solidarity motivated an entire migrant community to take action” during the pandemic
December 14, 2020
Elizabeth Krause
AMHERST, Mass. – As COVID-19 ravaged Italy during the early days of the pandemic politicians, public health officials and journalists feared that the northern city of Prato would be the most dangerous place in Italy due to its concentration of Chinese migrants who power the city’s “Made in Italy” fast-fashion garment industry. New research from University of Massachusetts Amherst anthropologist Elizabeth Krause has instead found that Prato emerged as a contagion exception as related to its Chinese migrant community, in part because of “viral encounters” – the social narratives, representat
UMass Amherst researchers celebrate years of restoration and a green exit strategy for farmers
December 15, 2020
Christine Hatch and Glorianna Davenport of the Living Observatory dig for a broken fiber optic cable in the newly constructed microtopography. Foothills Preserve, Plymouth, Mass. Photo courtesy: Ricard Torres-Mateluna/Hatch lab
Students Alyssa Chase, Jeron LeBlanc and Lyn Watts measure soil moisture along a transect above fiber optic cables at Foothills Preserve, Plymouth, Mass. Photo courtesy: UMass Amherst/Hatch lab
AMHERST, Mass. – As the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration’s Cranberry Bog Program released its report this month recounting a decade of restoring former cranberry bogs to wetlands, project research hydrogeologist Christine Hatch and her University of Massachusetts Amherst students are poised to continue collecting data and monitoring the “re-wilded” ecosystems’ progress for years to come.