How Radical Tech Could Boost Oceans’ Power to Cool the Planet

[00:00:00] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, June 25th. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. Since last year, Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, has been incorporating public data from U.S. accounts into its generative artificial intelligence features.

[00:00:44] There is no way for U.S. users to opt out, but there are ways to limit Meta's use of your data, and we'll tell you how. And then… Oceans help cool down the planet. Now startups are embarking on the world's first major projects to get oceans to suck

[00:01:00] up even more carbon dioxide. And those projects are being fueled by federal and corporate money. Our reporter Eric Kneeler will explain how these new technologies work and what impact they could have. But first… In Europe, backlash from regulatory agencies led Meta to indefinitely pause efforts to

[00:01:25] train its AI models on anything shared publicly on European Union and UK-based accounts. But in the U.S., it's a different story. The parent of Facebook and Instagram is already tapping into information from U.S. accounts and using it to make its chatbot smarter.

[00:01:42] Here to tell us more about that and share ways to keep your data private is Cordelia James from our personal tech team. So Cordelia, what has Meta said about the fact that it's using this public information to train its AI?

[00:01:56] Meta told me that public information is being used to train AI across the internet. So what they're doing here isn't entirely something super new. It's not really unique. Meta also said that they're committed to building AI responsibly and believe that it's

[00:02:12] important that people understand how they train the models that power their generative AI product. Okay, what data is Meta using then? Meta's using your public posts. So that includes maybe some videos that you're posting on Reels, photos, and just all kinds

[00:02:30] of stuff that you're posting to your feed. Meta says that it's not using posts to stories and it's not using posts that you're exchanging through private messaging. But essentially, yeah, like if you have a public profile where anyone could just see

[00:02:47] your Instagram page or maybe you post it onto Facebook and made the audience public, then it's training or is better informing Meta's AI features. Right. So if you're a U.S. user and you want to limit Meta's use of your data, Cordelia, what can you do?

[00:03:03] So there isn't necessarily a way to opt out from allowing Meta to use your public posts. You got to go private. If you have a private Instagram page, then moving forward, Meta won't use any of those posts to train its AI features.

[00:03:20] Also Meta recently started rolling out close friends. That's like a certain limited audience that you could use for your posts. Those posts are also not considered public and thus would not be using those posts to train its models.

[00:03:35] On Facebook, there's also a way for you to change the audience for your post. So if you choose for your friends or only me, then that would also prevent Meta from using it. Are those changes retroactive? Will they apply to old posts?

[00:03:50] No, they will not apply to old posts. So essentially, if you have public posts available on your page right now, then chances are Meta is already using that to better inform its features. But if you were to make your post private starting today, then whenever you would post

[00:04:08] moving forward, Meta would not be able to use. Can you walk us through the steps of how to do this on Facebook and on Instagram? Yeah. So on Instagram, you want to make sure that you have your profile tab highlighted.

[00:04:22] And there are these three lines at the top that are essentially like a menu. You want to tap that. And from there, you want to open the settings and activity section. Then you want to tap account privacy, toggle your account to private.

[00:04:35] For Facebook, you want to select the menu on your screen and then tap settings and privacy and then select settings. Scroll to where it says audience and visibility. Public posts and then select an option other than public, such as friends or only me.

[00:04:52] That sounds like a lot of steps. But if you're worried about your privacy, then it might be worth it. That was Cordelia James from our personal tech team. Coming up, new projects aim to rev up the ocean's power to cool the earth.

[00:05:09] We'll explain how these new technologies work after the break. Oceans absorb about a third of the planet's atmospheric carbon. Startups want to boost that with electrochemistry and other unusual methods. Their efforts are attracting funding from the U.S. government and big companies interested

[00:05:38] in buying carbon credits to offset their emissions. Our reporter, Eric Kneeler, who covers climate, ocean, and earth sciences is here to tell us more about this. So Eric, there are a couple of different startups working on projects to remove CO2 from the oceans.

[00:05:53] Can you start by telling us about the company called Vesta? What are they trying? They're using the properties of a mineral called olivine, which has the ability to absorb carbon dioxide from ocean seawater.

[00:06:09] And they're actually mixing it in with sand, spreading the sand along beaches at a couple of locations and seeing if that could work as the sand gets churned up by ocean waves and moves into shallower water.

[00:06:23] This can be a way to sort of enhance a natural weathering process, as they call it, to again reduce the CO2 in the water, which then draws more CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean. What about this company, Aquatic? It's taking a different approach.

[00:06:39] What Aquatic is doing is using electrochemistry in a small pilot project in Southern California. And this electrical current separates the elements in the water and then the dissolved carbon is stored as a solid. This solid carbon material can be used for construction, while leftover hydrogen can

[00:06:57] be sold as a clean fuel. Aquatic uses different sensors throughout this process to make sure it's actually removing the carbon. And it's just recently signed a deal with Boeing to remove 62,000 metric tons of carbon. Eric, what about this company, Running Tide?

[00:07:15] Running Tide had been a leader in this sector. They had started up in Portland, Maine and had moved over to Iceland where they were running a couple different projects, but they had some trouble with their contracts and their finances.

[00:07:26] So even though they had a process to sequester or grab carbon, putting into the ocean with wood chips, the project basically has now gone off the books and this company is no longer operating. You've described a number of different approaches to carbon removal, but how do these companies

[00:07:47] verify that their methods work? Well, this is still one of the obstacles to all sorts of carbon removal efforts, whether it's from the atmosphere, whether it's land-based carbon removal, injection, carbon capture and storage, or using the ocean as sort of a giant machine to absorb carbon dioxide,

[00:08:07] a giant CO2 vacuum cleaner of sorts. Verifying these things in the ocean is extremely difficult. There are some experiments that we're going to be going on this summer, in fact, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.

[00:08:21] There's a group out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution that has a fleet of drones in the air, the surface and the water. Well, they'll be taking very precise measurements as they add a liquid alkaline material that

[00:08:36] will force more CO2 out of the atmosphere and into the ocean. Verification is still a big deal. It's important for the contracts. It's important for the science, and it's important for the environment as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about why monitoring is important?

[00:08:55] Monitoring is important not just for the science, for example, that the equations all match up. It's also important for the contracts. This is true with Aquatic, which had to verify that it is removing a certain amount of carbon

[00:09:09] from the water stream to sell these credits that they're selling to Boeing Corporation. In the open ocean, it's very difficult to verify these things in a closed loop system, in a laboratory on the shore or in like a factory near the water.

[00:09:27] Maybe you can figure out ways to look at the inputs and the outputs and measure the CO2 in the system and that's coming out of the system. But in the open ocean, it's really difficult.

[00:09:38] All the experts that I've talked to say that this is really going to be the challenge moving forward is the verification that these systems actually work, that they're not hurting marine life and they're making a difference in the environment. Oceans already remove about 30% of the planet's atmospheric carbon.

[00:09:57] How much more do scientists think these nascent technologies could help remove? Scientists think that using the ocean could eventually remove at least a million metric tons more in coming years. A million metric tons is about the equivalent of 200,000 gas powered passenger cars.

[00:10:16] The scale of this really has to increase though. By mid-century, you're looking at instead of tens of thousands or millions of tons, you've got to get to gigatons, which are billions of tons. So all of these startups, all of these experimental projects are really seeing if the technology

[00:10:33] works, the scale is the next big hurdle. All right, that was our reporter, Eric Kneeler. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop and deputy editor Scott Salloway. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:10:50] We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.