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After two decades as an industrial designer working on products like augmented reality glasses Lauryn Morris was ready for a change. I was really becoming jaded with the status quo of the linear economy, she says. Most products still take a one-way journey from raw materials to a landfill. Sustainabilityincluding what happens at a products end of lifeis usually an afterthought. Morris had seen the impact of climate change firsthand, when a wildfire in 2020 burned through a property that she and her husband own near Los Angeles. And she wanted to rethink her role as a designer. I wanted to not be part of the problem anymore, she says. I wanted to counter all of the waste that I was a part of over the last 20 years, and then show other people in the hardware world how we could challenge it and think differently. Lauryn Morris In 2023, she took a sabbatical to explore what she wanted to work on next. She took time to rechargeworking with her hands and spending time outsidewhile reading as much as she could about climate solutions. She went through the Climatebase fellowship, a 12-week accelerator program that helps professionals pivot to careers focused on climate. She could have taken several different paths. But she ended up taking inspiration from her own life: She loves driving vintage cars, and she wanted to find a way to help convert more existing cars on the road to EVs. Right now, EV conversions are typically custom projects. Morris had looked into converting her own car, a gas-guzzling 1975 Datsun, to electric. I started calling shops in Southern California and found two-year-long wait lists and really high price tags, she says. Auto shops do long, complicated, bespoke conversions and full restorations. Alternatively, there are companies that sell DIY kits for consumers to convert some models, like VW Beetles. But those hobbyist projects can also take months or years in a garage. [Photo: Dan Coronado/courtesy Nice] Its never really been interesting to me to do small projects, Morris says. Thats where the industry has been with gas-to-electric conversion. I wanted to take my experience working in mass production and apply principles of scale to reuse. How can we remanufacture things at scale? She saw the opportunity to make the idea of EV conversions mainstream. “I think that designers and product strategists are the missing key to make circularity more desirable and more normal for the way that we all consume products,” she says. While it’s not realistic to convert every car on the road to electric, Morris argues that conversions can make a “significant dent” in the adoption of EVs. She launched a startup called Nice (a reference to what people would say when they pulled up next to her vintage Datsun at traffic lights in L.A.: Nice car.) In 2024, the startup joined the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator to pilot the idea, starting with a 1987 Suzuki Samurai. The car is a cult favorite. Its really unique looking compared to modern vehicles, Morris says. Its a cute little boxy SUV. And its not rare. The idea is finding identical vehicles to convert in batches. [Photo: Dan Coronado/courtesy Nice] The company’s process involves doing R&D oncefiguring out where a battery and electric motor can fit, and the exact configuration neededand then repeating the process, making it both faster and more affordable. As the company moves forward, it will focus on cars that are newer and even more plentiful on the road, making it easier to scale. Currently the team is working on the first challenge: building the infrastructure to easily source used parts from retired Teslas or other electric cars. Our pilots with Suzuki Samurais proved the demand. People loved them,” Morris says. “I cant tell you how many people have reached out to have their Samurais converted. But the real bottleneck wasnt interest. It was infrastructure. When Nice converted its first two Samurais using the same process and parts, the cars performed differently because the second-life batteries they were using were different. “We found that the information we were able to get from the suppliers who were selling those second-life parts was very minimal,” Morris says. “There’s not a lot of transparency.” [Photo: Sarah Lyon/courtesy Nice] If you buy a used battery from a Tesla Model S, for example, you won’t know what year it was made or how it was used, from the climate it was driven in to how it was charged. More detailed diagnostics are possible but aren’t commonly used by resellers. So Morris is building a platform that can reclaim parts and certify their performance. Beyond cars, the second-life batteries can be used for energy storage. Some used EV batteries have enough life left to be a good fit for use in another car, while others are too drained but could still be used for years to store energy. [Photo: Sarah Lyon/courtesy Nice] “We’re seeing these two massive trends converge,” Morris says. “Hundreds of thousands of EVs are starting to age out of their warranty. The first wave of EVs is now retiring, and so there’s just this big wave of end-of-life EVs. Then we’re also seeing this exponential growth and demand for energy storage.” While others, like Redwood Materials, are beginning to use second-life batteries for large data centers, Nice plans to serve the thousands of commercial and industrial applications that need the same batteries but can’t easily source them. For most customers today, sourcing parts is still a game of guesswork and finger-crossing,” Morris says. “Thats the gap Im focused on closing as a founder: building the connective layer between salvage supply and second-life demand, and ensuring these assets are accessible, safe, and reliable far beyond EV conversions. The challenge, she says, is not so different than other projects she’s worked on in the past. “I just find it so fun and invigorating and energizing to learn about something really complex,” she says. “I didn’t get into augmented reality or head-worn computing knowing everything there is to know about computer vision and display technology, but you learn it along the way. It’s the same principle, where you study and understand the subject matter and think about what the goals are, what the value propositions are.” But Morris is more focused now on the bigger picture. “I realized that my role going forward in my career needs to be less about designing a new beautiful object and more about designing a system and looking at the value chain across all of these objects that we need in our lives,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with these products being in our lives. But the people responsible for making themindustrial designers, engineersare uniquely positioned to advocate for challenging that status quo of linear thinking.”
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Outdoor lighting for buildings, roads and advertising can help people see in the dark of night, but many astronomers are growing increasingly concerned that these lights could be blinding us to the rest of the universe. An estimate from 2023 showed that the rate of human-produced light is increasing in the night sky by as much as 10% per year. Im an astronomer who has chaired a standing commission on astronomical site protection for the International Astronomical Union-sponsored working groups studying ground-based light pollution. My work with these groups has centered around the idea that lights from human activities are now affecting astronomical observatories on what used to be distant mountaintops. Map of North Americas artificial sky brightness, as a ratio to the natural sky brightness [Image: Falchi et al., Science Advances (2016), CC BY-NC] Hot science in the cold, dark night While orbiting telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope give researchers a unique view of the cosmosparticularly because they can see light blocked by the Earths atmosphereground-based telescopes also continue to drive cutting-edge discovery. Telescopes on the ground capture light with gigantic and precise focusing mirrors that can be 20 to 35 feet wide. Moving all astronomical observations to space to escape light pollution would not be possible, because space missions have a much greater cost and so many large ground-based telescopes are already in operation or under construction. Around the world, there are 17 ground-based telescopes with primary mirrors as big or bigger than Webbs 20-foot mirror, and three more under construction with mirrors planned to span 80 to 130 feet. The newest telescope starting its scientific mission right now, the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, has a mirror with a 28-foot diameter and a 3-gigapixel camera. One of its missions is to map the distribution of dark matter in the universe. To do that, it will collect a sample of 2.6 billion galaxies. The typical galaxy in that sample is 100 times fainter than the natural glow in the nighttime air in the Earths atmosphere, so this Rubin Observatory program depends on near-total natural darkness. The more light pollution there is, the fewer stars a person can see when looking at the same part of the night sky. The image on the left depicts the constellation Orion in a dark sky; the image on the right is taken near the city of Orem, Utah, a city of about 100,000 people. [Photo: jpstanley/Flickr, CC BY] Any light scattered at nightroad lighting, building illumination, billboardswould add glare and noise to the scene, greatly reducing the number of galaxies Rubin can reliably measure in the same time, or greatly increasing the total exposure time required to get the same result. The LED revolution Astronomers care specifically about artificial light in the blue-green range of the electromagnetic spectrum, as that used to be the darkest part of the night sky. A decade ago, the most common outdoor lighting was from sodium vapor discharge lamps. They produced an orange-pink glow, which meant that they put out very little blue and green light. Even observatories relatively close to growing urban areas had skies that were naturally dark in the blue and green part of the spectrum, enabling all kinds of new observations. Then came the solid-state LED lighting revolution. Those lights put out a broad rainbow of color with very high efficiency, meaning they produce lots of light per watt of electricity. The earliest versions of LEDs put out a large fraction of their energy in the blue and green, but advancing technology now gets the same efficiency with warmer lights that have much less blue and green. Nevertheless, the formerly pristine darkness of the night sky now has much more light, particularly in the blue and green, from LEDs in cities and towns, lighting roads, public spaces, and advertising. The broad output of color from LEDs affects the whole spectrum, from ultraviolet through deep red. The U.S. Department of Energy commissioned a study in 2019 which predicted that the higher energy efficiency of LEDs would mean that the amount of power used for lights at night would go down, with the amount of light emitted staying roughly the same. But satellites looking down at the Earth reveal that just isnt the case. The amount of light is going steadily up, meaning that cities and businesses were willing to keep their electricity bills about the same as energy efficiency improved, and just get more light. Natural darkness in retreat As human activity spreads out over time, many of the remote areas that host observatories are becoming less remote. Light domes from large urban areas slightly brighten the dark sky at mountaintop observatories up to 200 miles away. When these urban areas are adjacent to an observatory, the addition to the skyglow is much stronger, making detection of the faintest galaxies and stars that much harder. The Mount Wilson Observatory in the Angeles National Forest may look remote, but urban sprawl from Los Angeles means that it is much closer to dense human activity today than it was when it was established in 1904. [Photo: USDA/USFS, CC BY] When the Mount Wilson Observatory was constructed in the Angeles National Forest near Pasadena, California, in the early 1900s, it was a very dark site, considerably far from the 500,000 people living in Greater Los Angeles. Today, 18.6 million people live in the L.A. area, and urban sprawl has brought civilization much closer to Mount Wilson. When Kitt Peak National Observatory was first under construction in the late 1950s, it was far from metro Tucson, Arizona, with its population of 230,000. Today, that area houses 1 million people, and Kitt Peak faces much more light pollution. Even telescopes in darker, more secluded regionslike northern Chile or western Texasexperience light pollution from industrial activities like open-pit mining or oil and gas facilities. European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope at the Paranal site in the sparsely populated Atacama Desert in northern Chile [Photo: J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl/ESO, CC BY-ND] The case of the European Southern Observatory An interesting modern challenge is facing the European Southern Observatory, which operates four of the worlds largest optical telescopes. Their site in northern Chile is very remote, and it is nominally covered by strict national regulations protecting the dark sky. AES Chile, an energy provider with strong U.S. investor backing, announced a plan in December 2024 for the development of a large industrial plant and transport hub close to the observatory. The plant would produce liquid hydrogen and ammonia for green energy. Even though formally compliant with the national lighting norm, the fully built operation could scatter enough artificial light into the night sky to turn the current observatorys pristine darkness into a state similar to some of the legacy observatories now near large urban areas. The location of AES Chiles planned project in relation to the European Southern Observatorys telescope sites [Image: European Southern Observatory, CC BY-ND] This light pollution could mean the facility wont have the same ability to detect and measure the faintest galaxies and stars. Light pollution doesnt only affect observatories. Today, around 80% of the worlds population cannot see the Milky Way at night. Some Asian cities are so bright that the eyes of people walking outdoors cannot become visually dark-adapted. In 2009, the International Astronomical Union declared that there is a universal right to starlight. The dark night sky belongs to all peopleits awe-inspiring beauty is something that you dont have to be an astronomer to appreciate. Richard Green is an astronomer emeritus at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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New technologies usually follow the technology adoption life cycle. Innovators and early adopters rush to embrace new technologies, while laggards and skeptics jump in much later. At first glance, it looks like artificial intelligence is following the same pattern, but a new crop of studies suggests that AI might follow a different course, one with significant implications for business, education, and society. This general phenomenon has often been described as AI hesitancy or AI reluctance. The typical adoption curve assumes a person who is hesitant or reluctant to embrace a technology will eventually do so anyway. This pattern has repeated over and over. Why would AI be any different? Emerging research on the reasons behind AI hesitancy, however, suggests there are different dynamics at play that might alter the traditional adoption cycle. For example, a recent study found that while some causes of this hesitation closely mirror those regarding previous technologies, others are unique to AI. In many ways, as someone who closely watches the spread of AI, there may be a better analogy: veganism. AI veganism The idea of an AI vegan is someone who abstains from using AI, the same way a vegan is someone who abstains from eating products derived from animals. Generally, the reasons people choose veganism do not fade automatically over time. They might be reasons that can be addressed, but theyre not just about getting more comfortable eating animals and animal products. Thats why the analogy in the case of AI is appealing. Unlike many other technologies, its important not to assume that skeptics and laggards will eventually become adopters. Many of those refusing to embrace AI actually fit the traditional archetype of an early adopter. The study on AI hesitation focused on college students who are often among the first demographics to adopt new technologies. There is some historical precedent for this analogy. Under the hood, AI is just a set of algorithms. Algorithmic aversion is a well-known phenomenon where humans are biased against algorithmic decision-makingeven if it is shown to be more effective. For example, people prefer dating advice from humans over advice from algorithms, even when the algorithms perform better. But the analogy to veganism applies in other ways, providing insights into what to expect in the future. In fact, studies show that three of the main reasons people choose veganism each have a parallel in AI avoidance. Ethical concerns One motivation for veganism is concern over the ethical sourcing of animal by-products. Similarly, studies have found that when users are aware that many content creators did not knowingly opt into letting their work be used to train AI, they are more likely to avoid using AI. Many vegans have ethical concerns about the treatment of animals. Some people who avoid using AI have ethical concerns about the treatment of content creators. [Photo: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images] These concerns were at the center of the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strikes in 2023, where the two unions argued for legal protections against companies using creatives works to train AI without consent or compensation. While some creators may be protected by such trade agreements, lots of models are instead trained on the work of amateur, independent, or freelance creators without these systematic protections. Environmental concerns A second motivation for veganism is concern over the environmental impacts of intensive animal agriculture, from deforestation to methane production. Research has shown that the computing resources needed to support AI are growing exponentially, dramatically increasing demand for electricity and water, and that efficiency improvements are unlikely to lower the overall power usage due to a rebound effect, which is when efficiency gains spur new technologies that consume more energy. Both AI and meat production spark concerns about environmental impact. [Photo: Kichul Shin/NurPhoto via Getty Images] One preliminary study found that increasing users awareness of the power demands of AI can affect how they use these systems. Another survey found that concern about ater usage to cool AI systems was a factor in students refusal to use the technology at Cambridge University. Personal wellness A third motivation for veganism is concern for possible negative health effects of eating animals and animal products. A potential parallel concern could be at work in AI veganism. A Microsoft Research study found that people who were more confident in using generative AI showed diminished critical thinking. The 2025 Cambridge University survey found some students avoiding AI out of concern that using it could make them lazy. It is not hard to imagine that the possible negative mental health effects of using AI could drive some AI abstinence in the same way the possible negative physical health effects of an omnivorous diet may drive some to veganism. How society reacts Veganism has led to a dedicated industry catering to that diet. Some restaurants feature vegan entrees. Some manufacturers specialize in vegan foods. Could it be the case that some companies will try to use the absence of AI as a selling point for their products and services? If so, it would be similar to how companies such as DuckDuckGo and the Mozilla Foundation provide alternative search engines and web browsers with enhanced privacy as their main feature. There are few vegans compared to nonvegans in the U.S. Estimates range as high as 4% of the population. But the persistence of veganism has enabled a niche market to serve them. Time will tell if AI veganism takes hold. David Joyner is an associate dean and senior research associate at the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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