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As artificial intelligence gets smarter, a growing number of companies are increasing its implementation in their operations or more heavily promoting their own AI offerings. The buzzword for this is “AI first.” Duolingo is among the latest to adopt an AI-first approach. The company’s CEO Luis von Ahn announced the change in an all-hands email Monday, saying it would stop using contractors to do work AI can handle and only increase headcount when teams have maximized all possible automation. The way we work is fundamentally shifting. AI is becoming the default starting point,” said Duolingos Chief Engineering Officer Natalie Glance in an internal Slack message she shared on LinkedIn. “Start with AI for every task. No matter how small, try using an AI tool first. It won’t always be faster or better at first – but that’s how you build skill. Don’t give up if the first result is wrong.” Von Ahn, in his email, said the AI-first approach was already paying dividends, helping the company with its content creation process. Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners,” he wrote. Earlier this month, Shopifys CEO told workers at that company that using AI was now a fundamental expectation in daily tasks. Our task here at Shopify is to make our software unquestionably the best canvas on which to develop the best businesses of the future, Tobi Lütke wrote. We do this by keeping everyone cutting edge and bringing all the best tools to bear. . . . For that we need to be absolutely ahead. AI’s rise in business has been forecast for years, of course, but as more companies make it a priority, there are other impacts to be considered. A scientific paper released by Cornell University late last year titled The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI said the pollution from data centers powering the AI industry could lead to up to 1,300 premature deaths each year by 2030. It further estimated, public health costs related to the air pollution those centers put out are already at $20 billion per year. Data centers are nothing new. They’ve been around since the 1940s, when the University of Pennsylvania built one to support the first general-purpose digital computer, the ENIAC. But as generative AI has grown, so too has the demand for newer, more powerful centers. The power requirements of data centers in North America increased from 2,688 megawatts at the end of 2022 to 5,341 megawatts at the end of 2023, according to MIT. And demand is only growing. (Energy Secretary Chris Wright, in February, called for more nuclear power plants to meet the growing demands of AI companies.) The demand for new data centers cannot be met in a sustainable way, said Noman Bashir, a Computing and Climate Impact Fellow at MIT’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium. “The pace at which companies are building new data centers means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel-based power plants.” This is all occurring as concerns about the environment have been deemphasized at many Big Tech firms. Companies like Walmart, Siemens and Apple all opted against signing an open letter earlier this year reaffirming commitment to the Paris Agreement. (Duolingo, which released an environmental statement last March, did not reply to questions about how the AI-first approach might impact the company’s environmental footprint.) Meanwhile, the Trump administration has dismantled dozens of climate programs in its first 100 days. And the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering overturning previous findings that classify greenhouse gas pollution as harmful, which could impact its ability to regulate carbon emissions. By 2030, Cornell forecasts, the public health burden of AI data centers will be double that of the U.S. steelmaking industry. And it could be on par with all of the cars, buses, and trucks in California. Shopify and Duolingo are hardly the only companies adopting an AI-first approach. Many companies large and small are racing to incorporate AI into all levels of their services and workflows. Financial services firm Lettuce leans into AI to assist with tax solutions. Findigs lets property managers use AI to screen rental applicants. And a real estate brokerage in Portugal is using an AI interactive real estate agent, which has already booked $100 million in sales. In the grand scheme, though, corporate use of AI is still in its infancy. ServiceNow’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index last year measured AI maturity at 4,500 businesses in 21 countries on a scale of 0 to 100. The average score was 44, with only one in six companies topping 50. Part of what’s keeping that score low is the newness of the technology. Another factor is cost. (Does using AI, especially one that’s developed in house, actually save money given the cost of data centers, for instance?) But in the coming months and years, more companies are likely to move to an AI-first approach. And that will likely increase emissions, pumping more CO2 and pollution into the atmosphere, raising even more health concerns.
Category:
E-Commerce
No, this article was not written with AI. You know how you can tell? Because it’s got a bit of personality (mine), and even though it’s about artificial intelligence (arguably one of the most boring topics on the planet, in my opinion), this doesn’t read like a computer generated it. (Just me, standing at my very-expensive standing desk, writing away on my laptop!) Which gets us to the reason for this article: a new study on AI. Researchers from Cornell University looked at how Western-centric AI models provide writing suggestions to users from different cultural backgrounds. The study, titled AI Suggestions Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles and Diminish Cultural Nuances, included 118 participants from India and the United States. And it found that when Indians and Americans used AI writing assistance, it often came at the expense of the Indians in the group. Why, you ask? Even though the tools helped both groups write faster, the Indian writers had to keep correcting the AIs suggestions, resulting in a smaller productivity boost. One reason for that is because AI tools like ChatGPT are primarily developed by American tech companies, which are powered by large language models that don’t contain all the linguistic nuances of 85% of the world’s population, who live in the Global South and are using AI-writing tools. (The Global South is defined as those countries primarily in the Southern Hemisphere, often considered developing or less developed than their northern counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.) Study researchers had the two groups write about cultural topics like food and holidays. Half used an AI-writing assistant that gave autocomplete suggestions. The writing samples showed that the Indian participants kept 25% of the suggestions while Americans kept only 19%, but also found the Indian writers made significantly more modifications to those suggestions, rendering them less helpful. For example, when some of the Indians wrote about food, a common suggestion included pizza. Or when they wrote about holidays, the AI tool suggested Christmas. In short, this study shows AI isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and benefits some users more than others. This is one of the first studies, if not the first, to show that the use of AI in writing could lead to cultural stereotyping and language homogenization, according one of the study’s authors, Aditya Vashistha, an assistant professor of information science. People start writing similarly to others, and thats not what we want. One of the beautiful things about the world is the diversity that we have. The study’s main author, Dhruv Agarwal, a doctoral student in the field of information science, said that although the technology brings a lot of value into peoples lives, “for that value to be equitable and for these products to do well in these markets, tech companies need to focus on cultural aspects, rather than just language aspects.
Category:
E-Commerce
Consumers are only just starting to feel pain from Trumps Liberation Day tariff spree. Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos, however, may be starting to feel something else from the tariffs: regret. When a report emerged overnight claiming that Amazon would start displaying tariff costs on its main page, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded by torching Amazon in a Tuesday morning press briefing. (According to CNN, Trump had already personally chewed Bezos out by then.) Despite everything that Bezos has done to support Trump in his second term, the administration just made it crystal-clear that presidential support under Trump only flows in one direction. Evidently, no amount of fealty was ever going to save Amazon from Trumps wrath if throwing Bezos under the bus ever proved advantageous in the slightest. Although Amazon strongly disputes the initial report about displaying tariff costs (“This was never approved and is not going to happen.”), such a move would not be unheard of. Other businesses, including Fabletics and Temu, have been introducing tariff surcharges, alerting customers in letters, and adding tariff prices to websites and bills. Meanwhile, Amazon has reportedly been hurting more than most under Trumps 145% tariffs on China. Leavitt did not seem to think Amazon was justified in potentially joining those other companies, though. Speaking on behalf of Trump, she described it as a hostile and political act by Amazon. REPORTER: Amazon will soon display a number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding. Isn't that a perfect demonstration that it's the American consumer who is paying for these policies? LEAVITT: This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.[image or embed]— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 29, 2025 at 9:03 AM Its not a surprise, Leavitt continued, because, as Reuters recently wrote, Amazon is partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm. She held up a printout of the article, about an Amazon project known as China Books, to prove it was realthough recent is a bit of a stretch, considering the article came out in 2021. This broadside seems designed to provide a handy talking point about why Amazon is, in this administrations apparent view, in cahoots with China against Trump. Surely, Amazons reported stab at pricing transparency is an act of political hostility and sabotage, Leavitts comments suggest, not an accurate temperature-read of a climate in which consumer confidence has already plunged to its lowest levels since peak pandemic 2020. Its obvious why the administration would want to paint Amazon as the villain in this situation. An April survey of 400 U.S. company leaders by the research firm Zilliant found 44% of businesses plan to pass tariff costs onto consumers. A company of Amazons size and stature leading the charge would give any companies who remain on the fence permission to go for it. If Amazon is displaying tariff costs, showing customers who to blame, it becomes standard procedure. What is far less obvious, though, is why Bezos ever worked so hard to get on Trumps good side in the first place. During Trumps first term, Bezos had a contentious relationship with the president. Trump would frequently affix Amazon to the title of the newspaper Bezos owns, The Washington Post, when speaking about the paper after he received unfavorable coverage. The implication was that the paper was little more than a lobbying arm for Bezoss personal business interests. Bezos even argued in a 2019 court case that Trumps bias against Amazon had cost it a chance to win a $10 billion Pentagon contract. In Trumps second term, though, past has not been prologue. Bezoss sharp pivot toward MAGA began last October with his out-of-nowhere announcement that the Post would not be endorsing a candidate in the November election. Though he cited the move as a way to avoid a perception of bias at a time when many Americans dont believe the media, the last-minute announcement only fostered a perception of biasat the Post, specifically. The non-endorsement reportedly cost the paper over 250,000 subscribers. At the time, Bezos could have plausibly still maintained a sheen of neutrality. He has only since further positioned himself firmly in Trumps corner, though. In the past few months, hes drastically scaled back DEI policies at Amazon, donated a million dollars to Trumps inauguration fund (and prominently attended it), dined at Mar-a-Lago, and overhauled the Posts op-ed section in support of two Trump-friendly pillars: personal liberties and free marketsa move that reportedly cost the paper another 75,000 subscribers. In Bezoss most sycophantic-seeming gesture of all, Amazon even shelled out $40 million for a documentary on Melania Trump. The ostensible reason for this red carpet rollout is that Bezos is a businessman, frst and foremost. In a December interview at The New York Timess DealBook Summit, he explained why he was more optimistic about Trumps second term: He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, Im going to help him. But if an interest in deregulation was all that animated Bezoss enthusiasm, he probably wouldnt have been so ostentatious in his support of the president and his policies. Whats more likely is that he made a cold calculation that an if-you-cant-beat-em-join-em ethos and some financial support could neutralize the threat of Trumps antagonism. If so, it was a critical miscalculation. Even if it werent obvious from Trumps entire political life that loyalty is a one-way street, it should have been clear that hed only view with contempt those who have suddenly decided to butter him up (Everybody wants to be my friend, Trump crowed in December, as business leaders including Bezos began to kiss the ring.) What is the hypothetical difference between where Bezos finds himself todaywith the administration smearing Amazon as Chinese propagandists over a story that the company thoroughly denieshad he either opposed Trump or maintained an air of neutrality? Theres no way of knowing. Whatever it is, though, its probably a better position than Trump continuing to antagonize him while the anti-Trump crowd occasionally boycotts his company. Best of luck with the Melania doc, though.
Category:
E-Commerce
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