The AI Carbon Footprint and Responsibilities of AI Scientists

This article examines ethical implications of the growing AI carbon footprint, focusing on the fair distribution of prospective responsibilities among groups of involved actors. First, major groups of involved actors are identified, including AI scientists, AI industry, and AI infrastructure providers, from datacenters to electrical energy suppliers. Second, responsibilities of AI scientists concerning climate warming mitigation actions are disentangled from responsibilities of other involved actors. Third, to implement these responsibilities nudging interventions are suggested, leveraging on AI competitive games which would prize research combining better system accuracy with greater computational and energy efficiency. Finally, in addition to the AI carbon footprint, it is argued that another ethical issue with a genuinely global dimension is now emerging in the AI ethics agenda. This issue concerns the threats that AI-powered cyberweapons pose to the digital command, control, and communication infrastructure of nuclear weapons systems.

Games and enculturation: A cross-cultural analysis of cooperative goal structures in Austronesian games

While most animals play, only humans play games. As animal play serves to teach offspring important life-skills in a safe scenario, human games might, in similar ways, teach important culturally relevant skills. Humans in all cultures play games; however, it is not clear whether variation in the characteristics of games across cultural groups is related to group-level attributes. Here we investigate specifically whether the cooperativeness of games covaries with socio-ecological differences across cultural groups. We hypothesize that cultural groups that engage in frequent inter-group conflict, cooperative sustenance acquisition, or that have less stratified social structures, might more frequently play cooperative games as compared to groups that do not share these characteristics. To test these hypotheses, we gathered data from the ethnographic record on 25 ethnolinguistic groups in the Austronesian language family. We show that cultural groups with higher levels of inter-group conflict and cooperative land-based hunting play cooperative games more frequently than other groups. Additionally, cultural groups with higher levels of intra-group conflict play competitive games more frequently than other groups. These findings indicate that games are not randomly distributed among cultures, but rather relate to the socio-ecological settings of the cultural groups that practice them. We argue that games serve as training grounds for group-specific norms and values and thereby have an important function in enculturation during childhood. Moreover, games might server an important role in the maintenance of cultural diversity.

Under Pressure

Video games frequently invoke high-pressure circumstances in which player performance is crucial. These high-pressure circumstances are incubators for 'choking' and 'clutching'-phenomena that broadly address critical failures and successes in performance, respectively. The eruption of esports into the mainstream has vitalized the need to understand performance in video games, and particularly in competitive games spaces. In this work, we explore the potential mechanisms behind choking and clutching and how they are related to player traits and tendencies. We report the results of multiple regression analyses, finding that the propensity to choke is positively correlated with Reinvestment, Obsessive Passion, and Public Self-Consciousness, as well as Approach and Avoidance coping styles. Likewise, we find that the propensity to clutch is negatively correlated with Social Anxiety, and positively with Private Self-Consciousness and player experience with competitive gaming. We propose that these findings can be utilized to scaffold and support performance in high-pressure gaming spaces, such as esports. This work represents an initial step in the empirical exploration of choking and clutching in competitive video game contexts.

The Influence of Self-Talk on Athletes’ Performance in National Youth Games Competitions

The application of psychological principles of human performance to help people consistently perform in competitive games is an aspect of interest in sport psychology. Self-talk is one of the cognitive factors believed to contribute to athletes’ performance which are lacking in majority of the athletes attitude based on some factors. This study was to assess athletes’ belief in self-talk relative to their performance in competitive games. The study was a survey conducted in North-Central Nigeria. Participants (N=100) were sampled from contingents who represented twenty-two states that participated in the third edition of the National Youth Games (NYG) held in the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. To guide this study, three research questions were raised and one hypothesis was formulated. An instrument; Belief in Self-Talk Questionnaire (BSQ), was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data collected. Results of this study revealed that belief in use of self-talk during competition significantly improved performance of athletes. Participants reported that positive thoughts make them relax enough to perform well on tasks. Finding also showed that belief in negative thoughts mar performance of athletes. Finally, investigation of this study revealed that use of self-talk by individual sport athletes and team sport athletes differ significantly; the former reported more frequent use of self-talk than the latter.

Champ versus Chump: Viewing an Opponent’s Face Engages Attention but Not Reward Systems

When we play competitive games, the opponents that we face act as predictors of the outcome of the game. For instance, if you are an average chess player and you face a Grandmaster, you anticipate a loss. Framed in a reinforcement learning perspective, our opponents can be thought of as predictors of rewards and punishments. The present study investigates whether facing an opponent would be processed as a reward or punishment depending on the level of difficulty the opponent poses. Participants played Rock, Paper, Scissors against three computer opponents while electroencephalographic (EEG) data was recorded. In a key manipulation, one opponent (HARD) was programmed to win most often, another (EASY) was made to lose most often, and the third (AVERAGE) had equiprobable outcomes of wins, losses, and ties. Through practice, participants learned to anticipate the relative challenge of a game based on the opponent they were facing that round. An analysis of our EEG data revealed that winning outcomes elicited a reward positivity relative to losing outcomes. Interestingly, our analysis of the predictive cues (i.e., the opponents’ faces) demonstrated that attentional engagement (P3a) was contextually sensitive to anticipated game difficulty. As such, our results for the predictive cue are contrary to what one might expect for a reinforcement model associated with predicted reward, but rather demonstrate that the neural response to the predictive cue was encoding the level of engagement with the opponent as opposed to value relative to the anticipated outcome.

Effects of Congested Fixture on Men’s Volleyball Load Demands: Interactions with Sets Played

The purpose of this study was to compare the external load, internal load, and technical efficacy between the first and the second matches (M1 and M2) occurring in congested fixtures (two matches in two days) using the number of sets as a moderating factor. An observational analytic research design was adopted. Data from official volleyball matches were collected during the first competitive period of the championship, comprising 14 competitive games within 10 weeks. Ten male elite volleyball athletes (age: 21.7 ± 4.19 years of age; experience: 6.2 ± 3.8 years; body mass: 85.7 ± 8.69 kg; height: 192.4 ± 6.25 cm; BMI: 23.1 ± 1.40 kg/m2) participated in this study. Players were monitored for external load (number of jumps and height of jumps) and internal load (using the rate of perceived exertion—RPE). Additionally, notational analysis collected information about attack efficacy and receptions made during matches. The mixed ANOVA revealed no significant interaction between time (M1 vs. M2) and number of sets for number of jumps per minute (p = 0.235; ηp2 = 0.114), mean jump height (p = 0.076; ηp2 = 0.193), RPE (p = 0.261; ηp2 = 0.106), attack efficacy (p = 0.346; ηp2 = 0.085), Positive reception (p = 0.980; ηp2 = 0.002) and Perfect reception (p = 0.762; ηp2 = 0.022). In conclusion, congested fixtures do not seem to affect the performance of volleyball players negatively.