Blog Post 10

 Artificial Intelligence: Is it good or bad?

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer program or a machine to think and learn. It is a field of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines that can think and act like humans. AI includes machine learning, which allows machines to improve their performance on a specific task by learning from data, and natural language processing, which enables machines to understand and generate human language. Some common examples of AI include virtual personal assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, and self-driving cars.

Some potential positive aspects of more complex AI and machine learning include increased efficiency and productivity. AI and machine learning can automate tasks and processes, allowing humans to focus on more complex and valuable work. This can help businesses and organizations operate more efficiently and effectively. 

Another positive impact that AI may have is improved decision-making. AI and machine learning algorithms can process large amounts of data and identify patterns and trends that humans might not be able to detect. This can help decision-makers make more informed decisions, leading to better outcomes. 

Another would be enhanced customer experiences. AI and machine learning can be used to create personalized experiences for customers, such as personalized product recommendations or more efficient customer service. This can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Finally, new and improved products and services. AI and machine learning can be used to develop new products and services that were not previously possible. For example, AI-powered robots can assist with tasks that are dangerous or difficult for humans, such as exploring hazardous environments or performing delicate surgeries.

Some of the cons that AI promotes could be the loss of jobs. As AI and machine learning algorithms become more advanced, they may be able to automate tasks that were previously performed by humans. This could result in job losses, particularly for workers in industries that are vulnerable to automation.

Along with this, there are many ethical concerns. As AI becomes more advanced, there are concerns about its potential impact on society and its ethical implications. For example, there are concerns about the use of AI for surveillance, or the potential for AI to be used for malicious purposes, such as creating fake news or launching cyber attacks.

Bias and discrimination are also something many people worry about when AI information is being used more frequently. AI algorithms are trained on data, and if the data used to train the algorithms is biased, the algorithms themselves may be biased. This can lead to unfair and discriminatory outcomes, such as biased hiring decisions or biased loan approvals.

And finally, AI is known to be a huge security risk. As AI systems become more complex and integrated into critical infrastructure, there is a risk that they could be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This could have serious consequences, such as disrupting vital services or causing physical harm.

This takes me to my next topic. AI and privacy. There are several ways that AI can hurt people's privacy. One is data collection. AI systems often collect large amounts of personal data in order to function properly. This data can be sensitive, and if it is not properly protected, it could be accessed by unauthorized parties, leading to privacy violations. Another way is the surveillance of an individual. AI can be used to automate surveillance systems, making it easier to monitor individuals without their knowledge or consent. This can infringe on people's right to privacy. Finally, hacking. As AI systems become more complex and integrated into critical infrastructure, they may become targets for hackers, who could potentially use AI to access sensitive personal data or disrupt vital services.

The video, In the Age of AI, taught me whether or not we should be scared of AI depends on how it is used and developed. AI has the potential to bring many benefits to society, such as increased efficiency, improved decision making, and new and improved products and services. However, there are also potential risks and downsides to AI, such as job loss, ethical concerns, and security risks. It is important for society to carefully consider the potential impacts of AI and take steps to ensure that it is developed and used in a responsible and ethical way. This may require investment in research and development, regulation, and public education about AI.

In conclusion, there are many pros and cons to this new technology advancement: artificial intelligence. Everything that we need to know about AI is right in front of us. In retrospect, AI is just as smart as the human brain, and we have billions of those around the world that have done so much for our society. However, at what expense does it become too much and the negatives outweigh the positives?

 

FINAL BLOG POST

   Our Society's Relationship with Technology: 

    Technology has consumed so many people's lives; in positive and negative ways. Technology teaches each individual who has access to it about an abundance of information that we may have never been able to have access to without the power of technology. Technology has altered how we entertain ourselves, interact with one another, and consume various forms of media. It has made amusing advances, but it has also made significant safety advances in home security and medical devices. Almost every element of modern life is impacted by technology, including productivity, socializing, food and healthcare access, and transportation efficiency and safety. The power of the internet has facilitated the emergence of international communities and made it easier to exchange information and resources.

In my personal life, I can say that I am thankful and grateful for technology. Being a student, I have found that technology helps with convenient communication, the healthcare sector improved its efficiency and still is, information is easier to access, progress in medicine, and better learning opportunities. However, being a student also comes with negative impacts to technology. Social media and mobile gadgets may cause psychological problems as well as physical problems including eyestrain and trouble focusing on crucial tasks. Although we use technology to advance our studies and utilize it to our benefit, it becomes a distraction just as well as it helps us. Additionally, they might exacerbate more severe medical issues like depression. Children and teenagers who are still developing may be more negatively impacted by excessive usage of technology. As we saw in the video titled, Mad World Remix of Moby Video (Are You Lost In The World Like Me), we see firsthand how Moby reacts to technology and more specifically social media. We see his mental health completely deteriorate as he gets more consumed in the world of technology. 

Although I am grateful for what technology has brought me, I feel as though I do not have a great relationship with technology. I rely on technology for all of my studies, I am distracted by technology when I shouldn’t be, and I can’t create real and authentic ideas without backing up my findings with technology. In an article named, Four Ways Technology has Negatively Changed Education, it is proven that “68% of surveyed teachers admit that digital tools make students take shortcuts, instead of investing any effort in writing, 67 % report students have difficulty reading and comprehending complicated texts, and 46 % say digital tools make students write fast and carelessly.” This quote helps me better understand the numbers of how I feel about my relationship with technology. 

Along with this, I believe that I spend too much time on technology, specifically my cellular device. We have become equipped to check our phones so consistently and can even wire our computers with the notifications we get on our phones for when we don’t have our phones in hand. For example, in class, I can’t say it isn’t tempting to look at when we have it at our fingertips. Technology leads me to not retain information in class and hurts my education. When asked if I think technology is making me smarter, I would say no due to the fact that it disconnects us from the real world. On top of this, we can never guarantee that the information we see and gain from technology is real. We all see, read, and watch what we want to and what we believe in. The information we see is most definitely misleading and gives us unreliable information. I am not oblivious, however, to what technology has given us. We now have access to a far greater range of knowledge because of technological improvements. Knowledge has also, in some ways, "democratized." Online information is accessible to almost everyone and can even be shared. We also know that since anyone can post anything online, there is no way to guarantee the quality of the information. Most of the time, the accuracy of material found online has not been verified. Not every website is made equally. They differ in terms of prejudice, intent, and quality. 

In saying this, we can assume that it has become a part of our society to believe what we see online. We have begun to accept what we see and find through technology. Everything we read, view, or share online is a fabrication. This is among the most significant justifications for not believing everything you read or see online. What you want to see is what the internet and social media are displaying to society. It presents information to you in a way that may cause us to become fixated on our screens.

It is more than just me who is affected by technology. Between friends and family, we have all become fixated and reliant on technology and what we gain or lose from it. As mentioned before, there are studies that have made us realize that all of society accepts the fake news we get from our advertisements, the internet, and social media. We all have a major online presence that affects so many others to join the unfortunate path that we have fallen victim to. This relates to data protection, terrorism, crime, complexity, privacy issues, social isolation, workload excess, manipulating digital media, and unstable employment.

Mentioning unstable employment, we all can agree we have googled ourselves at least once in our lifetime. It makes you think about what employers may think to look for when hiring you. Luckily, I have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to what I put on the internet. However, I know that not everyone is as lucky and there are some who have made mistakes in what they post on social media. Not only would they post themselves, but also what others post of them for the world to see. In college students, specifically, we find that underage drinking and profanity are posted on social media, and with one click of a finger, employers can see these faults and struggle to hire that student. Personally, I use Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and Facebook. All of these social media programs promote my lifestyle and I am not afraid to say that I love that aspect of social media applications. For the friends and family that live across the country, or who I don’t see as often as I would like, I love knowing that they can see what I am up to and I love being able to see that from their posts as well. However, I have given these social media applications so much information that I am not proud of. Each of these applications has my email and phone number which other people on these programs can find. So much of my information and internal life can be seen by people who are also a part of the social media community who I don’t know. This aspect of social media will always be unsettling.

        In conclusion, the technological advancements that we have made have brought our society so much. Technology teaches each individual who has access to it about an abundance of information that we may have never been able to have access to without the power of technology. Technology has altered how we entertain ourselves, interact with one another, and consume various forms of media. As we have also seen, technology can become so consuming to the average person that it can negatively impact us as well.  For example, it can be a distraction, we have become reliant on technology, mental health deterioration, and unstable employment due to what we post and it has taught our society to believe what we see online regardless of the reliability of it. Technology is not at all a bad thing, but what society needs to realize is that our relationship needs to change to lessen these negative impacts on such a powerful thing in our lives; technology.

Blog Post Eleven

 EOTO Project 2: What I Learned About Mainstream Media

 

  I found that the most interesting concept theory talked about during presentations was mainstream media. Not only did I find it interesting, but I found it to be relatable to my topic of the illusory truth effect. I also enjoy learning more about something so broad to expand my knowledge when getting into the specifics.

    I was able to expand my knowledge of the positive and negative effects of mainstream media, what it is, in educational terms, as well as how it has affected our world today. Per Haley's presentation, I learned that mainstream media is a classification in the world of journalism to group together the main broadcasting and publishing media outlets that reach the general public. Mainstream media has drastically expanded since just a few years ago. Some of the big examples of mainstream media networks consist of NBC, CNN, BBC, FOX News, CBS News, ABC, NPR, and MSNBC.

    As mentioned previously, I obtained knowledge of the positive and negative effects of mainstream media. The positives consisted of the information mainstream media allows current generations to understand their rights and make them better educated on current events. With this being said, another positive about mainstream media is how far the news gets out, for example, some of these channels have maintained a global audience that educates all kinds of people from all over the world. 

    However, the negatives become an issue, as they do with all theories. For example, media sources are so often embedded with bias. One thing that I was able to compare to my studies on the illusory truth effect was how often people watch one certain mainstream media because of the way that they skew the information to get a certain group of people to watch. For example,  FOX News usually sides with the Republican party as well as CNN usually sides with the Democratic party which allows people to pick a choose what mainstream media channel they want to watch making them brainwashed. 

    As for how it has affected our world, I believe that the positives and negatives speak for themselves. However, positive or negative, our world can not live without mainstream media. It has become inseparable throughout communities across the globe.  We do not just see news and current events in mainstream media. We see trends, interviews, cooking and more.         

 

    

Blog Post Eight

 Privacy Online

    As I watched the TED Talks videos provided to us, I can't help but explain that as someone on multiple social media accounts, it is scary to think about how many different aspects of online privacy are just not private. With this being said, I was able to analyze these videos and understand better what goes into these websites and applications that so many people across the world take part in, but also better understand how to get away from it.

    In the first video with Juan Enriquez, he touches on the theory of online tattoos, which at first was a little confusing. He explained that like tattoos, they are forever, and so is your life online.  He alludes to the fact that there are so many applications on social media that can identify someone's face before actually tagging anyone in the photo. For example, there was a website called Face.com that held about 18 million different faces in the application itself. To no one's surprise, this company was sold to Facebook in 2012 to help others tag their friends in their posts. 

    In the second video, Catherine Krump explains how police departments have been capturing vast quantities of surveillance on people that is sensitive information. For example, locations on cars are being tracked which, as she explains can be sensitive due to one's whereabouts. She uses the example of one going to an alcoholic's anonymous meeting which is something that someone may not want others to know. The government then uses this information to profile you and guess on what kind of person you are; which could be very far from the truth.

    In the third video, we are presented with information from Christopher Soghoian on avoiding surveillance on you, especially when your phone is in your pocket. He explains that for many years, our phones caught so much information and surveillance on us. However, it has become easier since technology has advanced. The first thing that telephone companies do to make our precious cell phones, wires them for surveillance. Any party, like the government, other governments, hackers, and more can get into our personal phone calls and text messages with the wiring that companies do to their phones. 

    In the fourth and final video, Darieth Chilsom enlightens watchers and listeners on the revenge porn industry and how it has turned lives upside down. She had once been a victim of revenge porn where her private parts were revealed on a website that her ex-husband had been told to go and look at by her ex-boyfriend. She explains that 1 in 30 women have been affected by revenge porn. However, there are absolutely no laws to criminalize revenge porn. She also explains that the trouble that one may get in for revenge porn could be as simple as a fine. Women have to go through battles with mental illness and are potentially losing their jobs for their nude pictures being online. The issue arises to be the fact that the third party internet websites are what is the most complicated part because they are not compliant nor responsive to take the photos or videos or really any type of content down.     

    In conclusion, there are many steps we can take to be more protective of ourselves online and off. However, there is already so much of our information in huge databases that we can't do anything about. These topics being discussed are so relevant today due to all the use of electronics like cell phones, and on these cellphones, social media applications. The government obviously needs to reevaluate the information and the access they have to their personal lives, but let's be honest, this may not change for many years due to how much they love knowing information about their citizens. 
  

Blog Post Nine

 EOTO Project 2: Illusory Truth Effect

    I had the honor of researching and studying the illusory truth effect. This effect has many moving parts because of the research that has been done on
repeated information and how it is often perceived as more truthful than new information.

    The illusory truth effect is when an individual repeats something enough that others surrounding that person start to believe it. The illusory truth effect then creates an echo chamber which is when you begin to surround yourself with people who believe in what you believe in so you are only affected by the illusory truth effect by the people you choose to be around. Many people take part in an echo chamber to avoid a chilling effect which is when you are surrounded by people who don’t believe in the same thing as you do so you silence yourself in fear of speaking out and disagreeing with others. 

    As I mentioned before, the illusory truth effect has many moving parts and uses other things we have learned in class that go hand in hand with the statement of the illusory truth effect. However, these other vocabulary words allow for us to understand the positives and negatives of the effect itself. The positives of the illusory truth effect are that it causes less of a chance of an altercation between those of different beliefs because those around them are the people that believe the same due to the theory of echo chambers. The negatives, however, are that it causes more people to silence themselves around those that share the repetitional beliefs due to the chilling effect.

    The effects of the illusory truth effect include people viewing repetition as true information rather than correct information, as I mentioned while introducing the effect. This is the main effect and the most obvious due to repetition being the main aspect of the illusory truth effect to really work. Repetition increases processing influence, hence why the illusory truth effect is so effective on others. The processing influence is a valid effect because people are more likely to process the information they here the more often they hear it. People tend to perceive claims as truer if they have been exposed to them before. A negative effect would be that not everything we believe is true, whether this is the information we have taught ourselves or what others around us believe. In saying this, if we repeat it enough to get others to believe us even if it is not true. It raises so much concern in our world on misinformation and fake news. As an example, we see this with the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Finally, some examples of effects are, as we mentioned, COVID-19. People began to believe that symptoms came from radiation on 5G cell phones because enough people talked about it and brought it to the mainstream media. Following this, political parties. People watch certain news channels that correlate with which way they lean politically to only hear the side they believe. For example, those who watch the news channel, FOX are most likely to be in the Republican Party. On the other hand, on the news channel, CNN, the people who watch most

likely side with the Democratic Party.

In conclusion, our results suggest that the more often information is repeated, the more likely it is to be believed. This becomes an issue because the information we hear could be invalid and incorrect. Even though the illusory truth effect can't be stopped, because that would be silencing those and taking away their first amendment rights, we can find comfort in those who surround themselves with others that believe the same in hopes for less altercations.

  

Blog Post Seven

 Diffusion Theory

        The Diffusion Theory is a concept that was created to understand how technology gains momentum over time and through different populations. The theory is visualized as a bell curve (see above) to separate each population and how it is presented to the following population. 

    

    The bell curve begins with the innovators or pioneers. This community of people allows for conversation about the innovation of the idea to initiate conversation. Hence, they are people who take risks on ideas and begin the experimenting process. Following the innovators, is the early adopters' population who enjoy technology and trying new things. They get the momentum of trying these new things with the innovators' research and studies. Following the early innovators, we move into introducing the early majority who are people that begin to see trends and try technological products that influence the majority of society to also use the product. Next, the late majority allows for those who take after the early majority and follow the trends that everyone else around them is using. They are described to be "people skeptical of change, and will only adopt an innovation after it has been tried by the majority." The last and final part of this bell curve and theory for the innovations of our world are the laggards. These types of people resist the trends but are cautious with decisions and do extensive research before purchasing said innovation. 

    The innovation that I can rely on the theory to briefly explain is social media applications, TikTok for example. TikTok is a social media application that allows one to see short videos that influencers and friends may post. Because of the negative connotation around TikTok and how the government may be following out on every move around TikTok, people have become hesitant.

    TikTok was once called Music.ly and this application was bought by ByteDance Ltd to make TikTok. That company would be the innovator of TikTok by trying the application and making it to be something new. Since then, the early adopters allowed for releases of information about the boom of TikTok and how they can see the success that TikTok will soon convey. Since then, the early adopters made TikTok popular, there are now over 2 billion mobile downloads. The early adopters then influenced the late adopters, and we see this in older generations who are not as used to the success of social media applications. And finally, the smart people, the laggards who do their research see all the negatives about TikTok which is more than one may think so they continue to be without the application.    

   

 

Blog Post Six

What I Learned from EOTO One: 

    I found that listening to each and every presentation during our first Each One Teach One project was informative and exciting. You don't think about how all the technology we use today is brought up and how the founders of the technology brought such a vital staple technology to the surface of our world. Although some of the technologies are used in today's world, they each have had a separate impact on bettering our world and getting the technological advances to where they are today. One of those is, the VCR.

     The VCR, or videocassette recorder, presentation stood out to me and I wanted to further talk about it due to the complexity of how it has shaped what we use today. Even though the VCR is not heavily used as a technology object today, it opened so many more opportunities to those finding other technological advancements and allowed for past research on the VCR to better future findings. The first prototype was founded in 1951 and the final product was released in 1956. This VCR was released by a company called Ampex, which is an American electronics company. 

    VCRs are the reason we can record TV shows and not have to wait for a specific air time. The VCR essentially reinvented watching TV at home. It also allowed people to rewatch their favorite movies and shows without waiting for them to re-air. Having the recording means you can watch the show at any time which makes many people more inclined to sit down and watch TV. 

    VCR changed the way that we watch TV, that generation never had been able to “pick” what they watched on TV, and was the start of the change in how we watch television today. Without video recording, we would not have Netflix, Hulu, or any of our favorite streaming platforms. VCR made it possible to record TV. However, within the first 10-25 years of VCR existence, it was slowly dying due to faster development in technology. Modern improvements eventually lead to the expiration of the VCR.

    I would personally disagree that VCR had any negative effects on society, rather it reinvented how we watch TV today. Without a VCR we would not be able to download our favorite shows, stream television, and watch movies at our own convenience with the expectation of exploiting women and pornography distribution.