Can ChatGPT Make Students Smarter?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Social engineering attacks come in disguise, but Doppel sees through them. Our AI native platform shuts down threats and turns employees into first-line defenders. Learn more at doppel.com.

**Imani Moise** (0:19)
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, June 9th. I'm Imani Moise for The Wall Street Journal.
As electricity prices rise, some people are turning to DIY solutions to keep their energy bills in check. We're breaking down the trend that's starting to catch on in the US.
Then, as schools around the world grapple with the impact of AI on learning, one country is giving nearly 20,000 high schoolers their own ChatGPT accounts. We'll explain this national experiment and what it could mean for the future of education.
But first, more Americans are figuring out that you can use solar panels to pump electricity into your home without hiring a professional. It's called plug-in solar, or sometimes balcony solar, because that's where many people end up putting the panels. Until recently, these systems existed in a legal gray area in the US, but states are starting to warm up to the idea. Utah and Maryland have legalized plug-in solar, while several other states, including New York and Virginia, have passed laws clearing the way for the technology. And it's already taken off in parts of Europe, where more than a million systems have been installed in Germany alone. And it recently had one new convert in Maryland, our own Wall Street Journal columnist, Christopher Mims. He recently climbed onto his roof to give the technology a try, and is here now to tell us all about it. How do these solar panels work, and how do they compare to the pricier ones that you can have professionally installed?

**Christopher Mims** (1:52)
So, these solar panels are identical to the pricier ones you can get professionally installed. The difference is you install it yourself, and this technology comes with, I call it a magic box, called a microinverter, which both converts the electricity that the solar panels generate so your home can use it, which converts the power that they produce into AC current that can just be pushed directly back into your home's electrical system through any standard outlet.

**Imani Moise** (2:26)
Did you feel the need to bone up on safety protocols or electricity 101 before you installed this thing yourself?

**Christopher Mims** (2:33)
No, I just, I totally yolo-ed it. I got on my roof of my porch and flip-flops, that's how lackadaisical I was about this whole process, brought the fold-up solar panel with me, unfolded it, realized I had it wrong, had to turn it around 180 degrees, didn't really think in advance about where the wires were gonna go, dangled those off the porch, and then just plugged them into this micro-inverter and plugged that into the wall, installed an app, and it just started working.

**Imani Moise** (3:02)
And you're still here to tell the tale?

**Christopher Mims** (3:03)
I'm still here to tell the tale. In retrospect, the most foolish thing I did was to get on my roof and flip-flops, that was definitely the most hazardous part of the whole installation.

**Imani Moise** (3:12)
Can you walk us through the math? Is this thing saving you money?

**Christopher Mims** (3:15)
So, the math on this depends on two things. One is your latitude and the exposure of the surface that you're putting the solar panels on. And then two, the thing honestly that it depends the most on is the cost of electricity where you are, because for every kilowatt hour you produce with this system, that displaces however many cents you would have otherwise paid to the utility company.
For me, it's difficult to say without a year long trial exactly how much these panels that I put on this part of my roof are going to produce. But my guess is maybe $500 a year for the exact system that I was playing around with. So that's a pretty good payback. But your mileage very much may vary. And for a lot of folks to get the most out of a system like this, they're going to need to connect their panels to some kind of backup battery, which will allow them to gather power during the day and then use it in the early evening, which is when home power use tends to spike.

**Imani Moise** (4:16)
Where do you think that these systems are heading?

**Christopher Mims** (4:19)
I think potentially individual US states, New York, California, could end up being a gigantic market for these because these are places where people are already just paying eye-watering amounts for power. You know, when people are faced with that amount of pain month after month from their utility company, there's a really powerful incentive to essentially prepay their utility bills for the next few years and kind of take things in their own hands.