 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Coming up on the program, Gregory Stockle has a story on the MTV Music Awards where Taylor Swift took home the top prize. Brian Lin has this week's technology report on the environmental impacts of AI development. Later Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins present the English lesson of the day. But first, here is Gregory Stockle. Taylor Swift took home the top prize at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, or VMA, for her anti-hero music video. The Music Network's yearly awards show took place at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. This is unbelievable, the fact that this is a fan-voted award means so much to me, Swift said in her acceptance speech. I can't believe it was a year ago that I announced the Midnight's album. The night's first presenters were from the Male Musical Act in sync. They reunited to hand the Best Pop Video Award to Swift. Swift received the most nominations of any performer. Swift later returned to the stage to receive the Song of the Year Award for anti-hero and also the Best Direction Award. The performer received nine awards in total. Those included Artist of the Year and a group of nominees made up of women for the first time on the VMA show. Ice Spice, who worked with Swift on Karma Remix, won Best New Artist. New Music filled the show with songs from Nicki Minaj, who was also the host. Minaj performed the new song Last Time I Saw You. She then performed a piece from her upcoming Pink Friday II album. The award show centered on showing music's international power. K-pop or Korean pop, boy group Tomorrow X Together and Brazilian artist Anita introduced a new song together back for more. Another K-pop group, Stray Kids, performed the song S Class. Mexican singer Peso Pluma performed a song called Lady Gaga and Colombian singer Carol G sang Okidoki and another song Ta Ok Remix. Tiffany Haddish presented the award for Best Afro Beats, a new award group. Afro Beats is music with influences from Africa and Black American culture. Reima and Selena Gomez won the award for the popular song Calm Down. Africa in the House, Reima said in his acceptance speech. Gomez said, I want to send all of my love to Nigeria, thank you. Colombian star Shakira received the Video Vanguard Award and performed a mix of her popular songs. MTV, thank you for being such a big part of my career since I was only 18 years old, Shakira said. She also thanked her parents and her children, who she brought to the show. This is for you, my people, my Latin American people, inside and outside this country, she said in the Spanish language. Diddy received the Global Icon Award from Mary J. Blige and his daughter Chance Combs. He is the third act to receive the award after the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2022 and the Foo Fighters in 2021. The artist also performed at the VMAs for the first time since 2005. The performance was a collection of some of his most popular songs like Bad Boy for Life and Mo Money Mo Problems. Lil Wayne opened the show with the performance of his new single Cat Food. Olivia Rodrigo then brought her Vampire music video to the stage before performing Get Him Back. Later, Anita would win the Best Latin Award for the second year. In her acceptance speech, she laughed, saying, I want to thank myself, and she added, because I work so hard. French Montana, a performer who presented an award, brought attention to an effort to provide aid to victims of the Morocco earthquake. The performer grew up in Morocco. The VMA show ended with a celebration of 50 years of the musical form Hip Hop. It included Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, and DMC of Run DMC. I'm Gregory Stockle. Researchers say the methods used to create artificial intelligence, AI systems, require large amounts of water. As a result, people are calling on AI developers to reduce their water usage and take more responsibility for the environmental resources they use. The Associated Press recently reported on water usage by American-based Open AI, the company that launched the ChatGPT AI tool. ChatGPT is a so-called chatbot designed to interact smoothly with humans and perform high-level writing. Such tools are also known as generative AI or large language models. The development and training methods used to create large language models require powerful computing systems. This process uses a lot of electricity and produces a lot of heat. Data center operators pump in water to keep equipment cool. Open AI, which is backed by software maker Microsoft, operates a series of data centers in West Des Moines, Iowa. The city in the central part of the state is home to about 68,000 people. They're building them as fast as they can, said Steve Gair, who served as the city's mayor when Microsoft first arrived. He said the software maker was attracted to the city because of its efforts to improve public projects. The former official also said Microsoft provided a huge amount of money in taxes in support of the efforts. But, Gair said of the company, they were pretty secretive on what they're doing out there. In 2020, Microsoft said it was developing one of the world's most powerful supercomputers for Open AI. At the time, it did not name the Iowa City as home to the project. Microsoft described the effort as a single system with a huge number of semiconductors and processors to support AI workloads. In late May, Microsoft President Brad Smith made his first public comment about the company's new AI super computing data center in West Des Moines. He noted the center was built to support development efforts for the chat GPT system. Water is taken from the nearby raccoon and Des Moines rivers to cool down the Microsoft Open AI computing equipment, the AP reports. In its latest environmental report, Microsoft said its worldwide water usage rose 34% from 2021 to 2022 to almost 1.7 billion gallons. Industry experts have suggested the large increase was directly linked to the company's AI research. It's fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI, said Xiaolei Ren. He is a researcher at the University of California Riverside, who has been studying the environmental effects of AI products such as chat GPT. In a paper set to be published later this year, Ren's team estimates chat GPT takes up 500 milliliters of water each time someone asks the tool a series of between 5 and 50 questions. The estimate also includes indirect usage companies generally do not measure. This includes water used to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity. Most people are not aware of the resource usage underlying chat GPT, Ren said. If you're not aware of the resource usage, then there's no way that we can help conserve the resources. Ren noted that Google reported a 20% growth in water usage during the same period. He believes that growth is largely linked to the American-based search engine company's AI development work. Microsoft said in a recent statement to the AP that it is investing in research to measure the environmental effects of AI activities. The company promised to work on ways to make large systems more efficient in both training and application. In its own statement, OpenAI said it had given considerable thought to the best use of computing power. We recognize training large models can be energy and water intensive, it said. A West Des Moines government document from 2022 says the city will only consider future data center projects from Microsoft if those projects can demonstrate and implement technology to significantly reduce water usage from current levels. I'm Brian Lin. Now, Brian Lin is here to talk more about his technology report. Thanks for joining me, Brian. Of course, Dan, thanks for having me. This week's report dealt with how increased AI development is affecting a valuable natural resource, water. We learned that powerful computing systems used to build and train AI tools generate a lot of heat, so water is needed to cool them. How have technology companies reacted so far to calls for them to take steps to limit their water usage? So, so far there hasn't been a lot of attention paid to the direct link between AI development and water resource usage, and therefore not a lot of AI developers have been speaking out, but ChatGBT creator OpenAI and the company that backs it, Microsoft, both recently issued statements on the issue and those statements centered on ways they plan to make the technology, equipment, and processes they use more efficient. They argue that if those systems can be improved and made more effective, the need for water cooling will not be as great. And one proposed way to improve those processes is to carefully choose where AI developers set up their data centers in the first place, correct? Yes, so industry experts have pointed out that it makes sense for AI companies to set up development operations in places with a milder climate. This is because the cooling systems would be more effective in places that can use outside air, for example, in the process as well, not just water. In some very hot areas, it takes a lot more electricity and water throughout the whole year really to operate the computers used to build and train these AI systems. Interesting. Thanks again for being here, Brian. You're welcome. Name is Anna Matteo. And my name is Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. You're listening to the Learning English podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our series, Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, DC. Anna has recently moved to Washington, DC. It is a new experience for her. She is excited to live in the capital of the United States, but she also misses her hometown and family who live many hours away. Let's hear Anna talk about that with her friend, Marcia, in lesson 12 of Let's Learn English. Listen carefully for the expression Anna uses for the feeling of missing home. Washington, DC has many beautiful parks. In fact, this park reminds me of my home very far away. Anna, here's your coffee. Thanks, Marcia. What's wrong? I'm thinking about my family. I'm feeling homesick. Ah, yes, feeling homesick. I've had that feeling a few times in my life. It's a feeling that can sometimes be difficult. I agree. I think feeling homesick is more than just missing your home and family a little bit. It's something that hits you much more strongly. That's right. I think a good word to describe it is yearning. That's spelled Y E A R N I N G. A yearning is a noun and means a strong desire for something often for something that you can't reach. And the verb form of this word is to yearn for. And another word that means the same thing is longing. We can say we have a longing for something we strongly desire, but that we can't have or can't reach. And the verb form of this word is to long for. So if you long for home, it means you missed it a lot. And that's feeling homesick. Have you ever felt homesick, Jill? Yeah, one summer I was working in China in Chengdu. I was getting kind of homesick and while I was walking around the city, I ran into this cute little cafe that was just like an American coffee shop. I ordered a drink and sat down and saw they were even playing American videos on their TV. I started talking with the owner and I felt much less homesick. It was like a little bit of the US in the middle of Chengdu. Yeah, well, that makes sense. I think when you get to see something familiar with your own home culture, that will help you feel less homesick. And you know, it's also interesting that even a positive thing like the parks in Washington DC can make Anna homesick. That's because they remind her of home. Let's listen to Anna say that one more time. Hello. Washington DC has many beautiful parks. In fact, this park reminds me of my home very far away. Jill, remind me to tell our listeners what podcast they are listening to. Okay, I'll remind you now. Andrew, remember to tell our listeners what podcast they're listening to. You're listening to the Learning English podcast. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. In English, we remind someone to do something. But a thing can remind us of something else. That's right. People learning English need to remember to include the preposition of. So the order of words to follow is remind plus the person plus the preposition of. Like remind him of. Remind her of. Remind them of. Or remind Anna of. Remind Jill of. Remind someone of. That's right. The word also has a noun form. For that, we say a reminder. A reminder is something we use to help us remember. Like reminders on your phone. Right. I have to put everything on my phone to remember it nowadays. My phone is my memory. So you would be really lost if you lost your phone. No, I think I take a vacation. Well, also a reminder can simply be something we see or experience that makes us remember or think about something. And if it's a very negative reminder, we have a special expression. We say a sober reminder of something. Can you give an example, Andrew? Uh, sure. When we see a bad car accident, that is a sober reminder of how dangerous it can be to drive. In this case, the word sober means serious and causing worry. So Jill, coming back to the topic of feeling homesick, do you have any advice for how people can deal with it? I think if people keep themselves busy and get involved with people in their new place, they will usually feel less homesick. You'll probably find that the people are just as nice there as the people back home. And the good thing about homesickness is that it usually doesn't last too long. After a while, it wears off. That's true. It does wear off, which means it disappears after a certain amount of time. I remember that once I felt really homesick for just a few hours, but then only a day or two later, the feeling was mostly gone. Yeah, sometimes homesickness can wear off quickly. However, if someone continues to yearn for home or long for home for a long time, we could say they have chronic homesickness. Ah, yeah. Chronic, spelled C-H-R-O-N-I-C. Describe something that lasts for a very long time and keeps happening again and again. In that case, it doesn't wear off. I'm Andrew Smith and you're listening to the Learning English podcast. Jill, we should explain to our listeners that the phrasal verb wear off can be used for both physical objects and for what we feel inside. Oh yeah. For example, the paint on a car can slowly wear off over many years, especially if it has been sitting in the sun. But the phrasal verb wear off is used more for things like feelings or for the effects of food or medicine. Like the effect of a drug wears off over time. And the best cure for homesickness is to visit home. And depending on your family, you just might be happy to travel again afterwards. We do love our families. And when Anna talked about feeling homesick, she shared photos of her family with Marcia. Several times, Marcia asked Anna to explain a bit about what her family members do. Let's listen. This is my mother and this is my father. They are rodeo clowns. What do rodeo clowns do? They make jokes at a rodeo. People laugh. That's very different. Who is that woman in the picture? That is my aunt Lavender. She is my mom's sister. She loves gardening and makes spoons. She makes spoons? Of course. That, too, is very different. Oh, this is my uncle John. He is my father's brother. What does Uncle John do? He's a chicken farmer and makes guitars. He's awesome. And I'm his favorite niece. Who are they? They are my cousins. They are my uncle John's daughter and son. What do they do? They raise sheep and make sweaters. That's some family she has there. In American culture, asking about what kind of work people do is very common. At a social gathering, when Americans first meet a new person, often one of the first questions they ask is, what do you do? Or what kind of work do you do? That's right. Sometimes Americans will talk about their job first and then talk about where they are from or about their family. I guess Americans really like their jobs. Ha. Well, maybe. Or maybe they just like talking about them. For some reason, it's just one of the first things Americans usually talk about when they meet new people. That sounds like something a cultural anthropologist could tell us more about. Yeah, I think so, because anthropologists study human culture. Hmm. That gives me an idea for a guest we could invite to our podcast. I was just thinking the same thing. But even if we can't find a cultural anthropologist, there are still a lot of things our listeners can learn about American language and culture in the series, Let's Learn English. That's right. And we hope you've enjoyed today's lesson on the Learning English podcast. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.