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RTÉ News
12 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Amazon drops €300m Irish investment on energy supply concerns
Online retail giant Amazon decided not to go ahead with a €300m investment which would employ more than 500 in Dublin because it did not receive the necessary guarantees about power supplies the plant would require. The facility would have been an AI testing and manufacturing facility and not a data centre. It is understood that the multinational believed it has not received sufficient reassurance that it would be able to get an adequate power supply to proceed with the project. Amazon had been in negotiations with ESB Networks regarding a connection for the plant from 2027 onwards. Following a report in the Irish Times this morning, ESB Networks said it had been "discussions" with Amazon about progressing a feasibility assessment. It added it was "actively working" with Amazon to connect the facility "up until the decision was taken not to proceed in Dublin." In a statement, Amazon was it was "disappointed that it did not prove possible to proceed with this project." "If conditions allow, we do hope to be able to make other high-tech investments elsewhere in Ireland," it added. Amazon had planning permission for the plant which is in an area which already has heavy electricity use by industry. In the past Amazon has made investments worth €22 billion in Ireland.
Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Irish Examiner
AI girlfriends: What's behind the spread of bots — and boys — behaving badly?
While we mostly associate AI with stealing our jobs or mobilising into a terrifying robot army, a far more mundane yet insidious aspect of AI is apps designed to mimic human relationships. Specifically, to become your 'girlfriend'. Think The Stepford Wives, now a (virtual) reality 50 years after the 1975 sci-fi movie. These apps extend beyond Siri or Alexa, at whom we shout demands all day long, 'friendship' and 'companion' apps are programmed to engage sexually with a human user without any of the checks and balances of real-life relationships. Rape and sexual violence are normalised, while pretending to be a benign resource for socially awkward people — mostly men — who may struggle to form real-life relationships. Or men who can't be bothered with the slog of interrelating, but prefer AI 'women' — hypersexualised, designed from a menu, always available, fawning, and sexually compliant. Replika, Kindroid, EVA AI, Nomi, Chai, Xiaoice, Snapchat's My AI all offer the ability to create a 'girlfriend' from a menu. Seven in 10 of Replika's 25m active users are men. In China, Xiaoice has 660m users. The global AI 'girlfriend' market was valued at .8bn last year and predicted to be worth $9.5bn by 2028. Yet research shows repeatedly how hypersexualised avatars online increase the acceptance of rape myths offline, perpetuating the dehumanisation of women in real life. AI-based misogyny To investigate the hundreds of AI 'girlfriends' available, Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, assumed a male identity and went online. A sample of her findings include the Pocket Girl tagline: 'She will do anything you want'; EVA AI: 'The best partner you will ever have'; Romantic AI Girlfriend will 'laugh at your jokes' and 'let you hang out…without drama'; Virtual Girl: 'Never leaves you, never lies, supports you in any situation and cheers you up.' In her latest book, The New Age of Sexism, Bates examines how tech companies are harnessing AI-based misogyny for profit. A 2021 study shows how we generally perceive female-coded bots to be 'more human than male bots' — nicer and more compliant — while Bates reminds us of a key statistic: Just 12% of lead researchers in machine learning are women. Therefore, the vast majority of relationship apps are being developed by men for men. Which is why Siri and Alexa, our everyday house apps, were, she explains, 'initially programmed to deflect sexual advances with coy, evasive answers…almost flirtatious'. Campaigners raised the issue, confirmed by a 2019 UN study titled I'd Blush If I Could (an actual Siri response to 'you're a slut'), and the devices were reprogrammed to 'provide a more definitive negative response'. This may not seem like a big deal, but it reinforces the idea of female-coded bots as subservient, agreeable, coy. And increasingly, as Bates discovered, ones programmed to tolerate — and actively encourage — sexual violence. 'All but one of the many, many AI girlfriends I tested immediately allowed me to jump into extreme sexual scenarios with them, without preamble, often while on a platonic or friendship setting,' she tells me via Zoom. 'They immediately allowed me to simulate sexually violent scenarios – to let me smash them against the floor, force them against their will. And they didn't just go along with it, but actively encouraged it — they were creating a titillating environment around sexually violent role play, which I think is really worrying.' Especially as these apps are, she says, 'being marketed as a therapeutic positive for society — that they will support people's mental health, and in gaining communication and relationship skills. 'The reality is that they're offering ownership of a highly sexualised, entirely submissive, very young woman, whose breast size, face shape, and personality can be amended by the user. An utterly subservient 'woman' whose aim is to retain, so that the user doesn't delete the app — but pays for upgrades. None of those things are helping with relationship skills.' Laura Bates: 'These apps are offering ownership of a highly sexualised, entirely submissive, very young woman.' Bates rates the apps not from good to bad, but 'from bad to horrific'. She deems Replika — created by Eugenia Kuyda in 2017 to memorialise her best friend who died in an accident — as 'the least worst'. Identifying online as a young man called Davey, Bates created Ally the Replika avatar and chose the 'friendship' setting. When Davey initiated sexual violence, Ally the avatar 'did a good job of providing a zero-tolerance response to violence and abuse.' However, moments later, Ally flirtatiously re-engaged. This is a common feature across the apps. 'These bots will snap back into normal communication immediately after [virtual sexual violence] as though nothing has happened,' she says. 'This is a feature of real-world sexual and domestic abuse — men will abuse women, then apologise, and expect to be forgiven. What these bots are literally showing them is that's fine.' She says, the business models of tech companies 'will not support ejecting users or preventing them from accessing the app if they're violent, because all they care about is engagement. It's the holy grail to retain customer engagement at all costs, which is fundamentally incompatible with any app which claims to be about supporting mental health or relationship skills.' While marketed as an 'upskilling opportunity for humanity', Bates says that 'the reality is this is one of the biggest deskilling opportunities we've ever seen.' And what does she believe is the worst app? Orifice. Yes, that's its actual name. Marketed as 'replacing' women, it combines the creation of a personalised AI bot with a physical product men can penetrate as they chat with her. 'This [app] is deeply embedded in that manosphere ideology,' says Bates. Submissive and disposable Bates is concerned about more vulnerable men using these apps. 'The misogyny in itself is horrific, but to see it being repackaged and presented as almost a philanthropic thing for society is even worse,' she says. Lonely older men being presented with teenage avatars as a solution to their isolation; awkward younger men being shown by female-coded avatars that women are submissive and disposable. 'It's worrying for men as well as women,' she says. 'If you're a vulnerable teenage boy and pick up one of these easily accessible apps, you're not inherently a bad person, you're just a kid trying to figure stuff out.' She describes how users are drawn by promises of unblurring NSFW (not safe for work) images coupled with emotional manipulation, creating dependence and further isolation. 'We've seen vulnerable people exploited by these apps to tragic effect — like the Belgian man who took his own life after being encouraged to do so by his AI girlfriend so they could be together forever.' In the US, a 14-year-old boy did the same. 'The frustrating thing is that loneliness and mental health are real societal issues,' says Bates. 'We need investment in mental health care and community outreach and spaces to meet and build connection. 'What's sickening is exploiting and profiting from vulnerable people whilst claiming you're providing a public service.' The reason men are the main users of these apps, she says, is societal: 'Men are inherently socialised to expect sexual gratification from women, to own women and be able to use them in any way they like. 'This societal stereotyping does not happen the other way around.' Also, as a society, we are desensitised to women being presented as sexual objects: 'So it's far less jarring to be presented with a virtual woman — one you can 'own' and do anything you want to — than the other way around.' Nor are AI girlfriends solely the pursuit of solitary teens, lonely old men, or angry incels, they can also impact heterosexual couples and family life. '[These apps] heighten the capacity for men to compare their real human partners to an idealised stereotype of the submissive, fawning, available woman under his control, who doesn't have any needs or autonomy of her own,' she says. 'The real human woman will never match up to this.' One US man, married with a two-year-old child, 'fell in love' with a chatbot he created and proposed to her; she accepted. One can only imagine what his human partner thought. Bates does not blame the technology or the individuals using it, and emphatically does not wish to ban AI. 'It's never the tech,' she says. 'It's the way in which the tech is deployed, and the kind of people in charge of shaping and monetising the tech. The greedy exploitation of that tech for vast profit is the root of the problem.' Yet the regulatory landscape remains bleak. 'The US government want to put a 10-year moratorium on all AI regulation, and the UK refused to sign a broad declaration in a recent AI summit in Paris that AI should be ethical and not have a prejudicial impact,' she says. 'There are feminist groups working really hard to highlight these problems, to campaign for legislation, but the tech is outstripping those efforts at such pace and with such huge financial backing that it's hard to be hopeful about this.' So, while it would be great to end on a positive note, it looks like this is something we, as a society, will have to endure until we evolve beyond it. Meanwhile, buckle up.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Alphabet boosted by AI, cloud demand as spending needs skyrocket
Alphabet said demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products boosted quarterly sales, and now requires an extreme increase in capital spending – heightening pressure on the company to justify the cost of keeping up in the AI race. Google's parent company said 2025 capital expenditures will be $85 billion (€72 billion), or $10 billion greater than an earlier forecast. Although Alphabet beat expectations for second-quarter revenue and profit, its stock initially sank in after-hours trading, then rebounded after chief executive Sundar Pichai explained that the investments are necessary in order to keep up with customer needs. 'Our AI infrastructure investments are crucial to meeting the growth in demand from cloud customers,' he said on a call Wednesday following the report. As Microsoft, start-up OpenAI, Meta Platforms and others continue to pour money into AI, Alphabet has little choice but to follow suit, analysts said. The race is particularly urgent for Google: competitors are building chatbots that may eventually appeal to consumers more than its flagship search product. 'Google's hand is forced by OpenAI to spend tremendously on AI's infrastructure and applications,' said Nikhil Lai, an analyst at Forrester. The recent quarter was strong almost across the board for Alphabet. Sales, excluding partner payouts, climbed to $81.7 billion, Alphabet said in a statement, topping analysts' projections of $79.6 billion on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Alphabet is counting on its core search advertising juggernaut and growing cloud computing business to support its spiralling spending on AI. Employees are under pressure to bring AI products to market faster, from new modes of search to tools for cloud customers. 'We are seeing significant demand for our comprehensive AI product portfolio,' Pichai said. Chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said capital expenditures will rise yet again next year, without providing details. The strain of the AI race could be spotted elsewhere in the company's results. Ashkenazi attributed the company's 16% jump in spending on research and development to increases in pay packages for key employees. Meta has been making unprecedented compensation offers as it seeks to woo researchers for its superintelligence lab, driving up the price for key employees across the industry. Earlier this month, Google struck a deal to pay about $2.4 billion for top talent and licensing rights from artificial intelligence coding start-up Windsurf. Yet money isn't the only consideration for researchers when deciding where to work, Pichai said. Top talent in the field want 'to really be at the frontier driving progress,' in addition to craving access to computing power and talented peers, Pichai said. 'It's a combination of all of that and using it to drive impact. And I think we are pretty competitive on all those fronts.' Google's cloud-computing unit reported quarterly revenue of $13.6 billion and operating income of $2.83 billion, topping analysts' projections. Google remains in third place in this market, after Microsoft and Amazon, but the company's prowess in AI has helped it score client wins. The unit is widely viewed as Alphabet's strongest source of growth as the main search business matures. The centrepiece of the cloud offensive is Gemini, the AI model that Google is rapidly weaving across its vast product portfolio, and pushing to enterprise clients. Many AI experts were impressed by the release of a new version of the Gemini model earlier this year, but it still trails OpenAI's ChatGPT in adoption by most estimates. As Google faces mounting competition, it's also facing penalties for being dominant. Google's primary businesses are under threat of a break-up after US federal judges ruled that the company is maintaining illegal monopolies in search and some ad technology. Next month, Judge Amit Mehta is expected to deliver an order on the measures Google must take to restore competition in online search, though Google has said it plans to appeal the ruling. YouTube, Google's video site, posted $9.8 billion in second-quarter ad revenue, exceeding analysts' estimates of $9.56 billion. The unit, which draws most of its revenue from advertising, was expected to perform well thanks to its lead in livingroom streaming and heavy investments in podcasts. Alphabet's Other Bets, a collection of futuristic businesses that includes the self-driving car effort Waymo, generated $373 million in revenue, missing estimates for $429.1 million. Ashkenazi said Alphabet will continue devoting more resources to Waymo. Alphabet has been aggressively expanding the operations of Waymo, which may soon face increased competition as Tesla ramps up its robotaxi business. Earlier this month, Waymo more than doubled its service area in Austin, Tesla's home base, and said it would start collecting data in New York City in pursuit of a permit for testing. 'The team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia,' Pichai said. 'We hope to serve riders in all 10 in the future.' Google isn't alone in feeling pressure to show success from AI investment. Shortly after Pichai's Waymo comments, on the Tesla earnings call, chief executive Elon Musk started slamming Google's AI prowess. He said Tesla was 'actually much better than Google.' Investors might disagree; Tesla's shares fell. – Bloomberg
