Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving cars used to be a thing of science fiction.  A fantasy idea of the future.  But the future is now, and self-driving cars are being developed and improved at a rapid pace and are beginning to appear on our roads.  The autonomous vehicles are presently making their way into our lives through rideshare companies.  In August 2016, Uber released its first fleet of self-driving cars onto the streets of Pittsburgh.  In September 2016, Lyft announced its 10 year plan for fully integrating self-driving cars: fixed routes in 2017, more open routes traveled under 25 mph around 2019, and all Lyft rides done in a fully automated car in 2021 or 2022.  For now, these self-driving cars are on our streets with a “safety engineer,” who can override the autonomous features at any time, in the driver’s seat should anything go wrong on the trip.

The way these cars are programmed, they would definitely make roads safer.  Phippen said these cars “drive like your vision-impaired grandmother” – in a good way.  The cars never drive above the speed limit, even when the road is deserted.  The cars also do not turn right on red.  Both Uber and Google have said that they are trying to make their autonomous vehicles more assertive.  For Google, this means developing a honking algorithm to teach their self-driving cars “to be polite, considerate, and only honk when it makes driving safer for everyone.”  However, for Uber, this means “making the cars a bit more aggressive to blend with traffic flows where people routinely speed.”  True, this is what people are used to on the roads today.  But once our roads are only traveled by autonomous vehicles, they will no longer have to push the limits.  Instead, all the cars will be traveling at precisely the speed limit, all traffic laws will be followed, and our roads will be far safer than they are today.

Megan McArdle‘s article perfectly sums up my thoughts on the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles.  Yes, there will still be occasional accidents, and people will inevitably continue to overreact to these accidents for a while.  But as human error is slowly removed from the roads, the number of daily traffic accidents will surely decrease.  However, society is afraid of the unknown.  So the thought of even the smallest thing going wrong with a self-driving car is terrifying.  McArdle points out that even though these accidents will be rare, they will make national headlines and people will be afraid to take the jump into the unknown, no matter how much safer it technically is to what we have now.

In the future, when self-driving cars are more affordable and more available, I definitely want to own one.  I think they are infinitely safer and more efficient than any human driver.  Plus it gives me one less thing to worry about in my everyday life, so why wouldn’t I take advantage of such technology?  However, if it is as Zimmer says and “People won’t own cars, they’ll just use Lyft,” then maybe I will not own a car at all. Perhaps some day in the near future, I will just order a self-driving car to pick me up and drive me to work every morning.

Artificial Intelligence

According to Kris Hammond, “artificial intelligence is a sub-field of computer science. Its goal is to enable the development of computers that are able to do things normally done by people — in particular, things associated with people acting intelligently.”  In short, it is the field that aims to program a machine to work as a human would.  I feel as though what I would consider to be true “artificial intelligence” has a much stricter definition than what I consider to be human intelligence.  Because a computer is a machine, I would expect the computer to be able to accomplish all that a human can do, but better.  If the machine were unable to think or compute faster or more efficiently than the human, I likely would not consider the agent to be “intelligent”.  This is a topic that I find very intriguing, but particularly this semester.  I am currently taking the Artificial Intelligence course taught by Professor Sidney D’Mello.  While we have discussed some of the ethical issues that revolve around AI, the class certainly has more emphasis on the research and development behind artificially intelligent systems.

Traditionally in computer science, the Turing Test, invented by Alan Turing, uses a third-party human who tries to distinguish between 2 subjects – a human and a computer.  If the third-party human is unable to do so, then the computer must truly be intelligent.  On the surface, this is logical; it seems as though if a human is not intelligent enough to differentiate between the human and the computer, then the computer must exhibit intelligence, even so to a greater degree than humans.  As a counter-argument to the Turing Test is the Chinese Room Argument.  Searle pointed out that it is easy for a computer to take input and give specific output that could convince humans of its human-like abilities.  However, the computer would not comprehend and process the input in such a way that the output is intelligent.  Just because a machine can take in Chinese characters and return proper Chinese responses that could fool a native speaker does not mean that the machine understood the Chinese input or output or that the machine was able to comprehend the conversation between the two parties.

This extends further to human abilities that computers are unable to replicate.  The title of Geoff Nunberg‘s article, Do Feelings Compute? If Not, The Turing Test Doesn’t Mean Much, speaks for itself.  Currently, computers are unable to replicate human emotions.  Even if a machine were able to give an appropriate response when asked a question about feelings, the machine would not actually exhibit traces of that emotion.

Science Fiction movies and literature frequently exhibit artificially intelligent robots and machines taking over our world as we know it.  While I could, potentially, see this occurring one day, I do not believe that it is a current concern.  I believe that the near future of AI will have more positive than negative outcomes.  It could improve the medical field significantly and help academia progress much faster than it is now.  However, I don’t think the field of Artificial Intelligence is currently in a state where it can take over human life as we know it in a destructive manner in the foreseeable future.

Privacy Paradox – Project 3

For our third project, my group listened to the Privacy Paradox series of podcasts from Note to Self and completed some of their challenges.  We then discussed our thoughts in a podcast found here.

After completing some of the challenges, I have not made any changes to my technology habits.  I believe that I have to give up some of my privacy in order to use technology the way I do now, and this is something that I am okay with.  The recommended privacy personality survey labeled me as a realist, and I absolutely agree.  I do, in fact, “think about privacy but often choose convenience.”  For me, this an easy choice.  Some privacy is a necessary sacrifice in order to use modern technology.  One day this may be a more serious issue, but for now, I feel comfortable giving up a small amount of my privacy in exchange for modern technology.

Apart from my personal privacy, I believe that privacy in general is worth fighting for.  I am sure that someday soon, within our lifetime definitely, privacy will become a necessity, and the sooner we can figure out how to balance technology with privacy, the better our future will be.  Perhaps it will never again exist in the same form that it once did, but I do not think there is much privacy left for us to give up.

Extra, Extra! Read All About It!

Fake news consists of articles that the authors try to pass as fact but have no legitimate truth behind them.  Typically, these articles are circulated across social media platforms as a way of presenting them to the general public as “news”.

When I look at my social media accounts, fake news is most definitely present.  I usually find these articles to be harmless – just something I ignore, except for the occasional clever Onion article that will make me chuckle and (hopefully) everyone knows that anything by the Onion is considered a satire.  I usually don’t rely on social media for news.  The CNN app on my phone notifies me of most important news and most days, I don’t have enough time to read more than just the headline anyway.  Any news that pops up on my social media feed are generally ignored, real or fake.

However, around election season, all the shared articles started to get really annoying, as each of the articles was usually attached to a long, politically-charged post that made me want to block a lot of people on social media.  Again, most of these posts were ignored (see “annoying”, “long”, and “politically-charged”).  Looking back, though, it would not surprise me one bit if the majority of those articles shared were fake news.  The few headlines I read were undoubtedly fake news, but what more could I expect from crazy relatives who share things like daily updates of their green smoothie cleanse.  Look at actual data on it, though, surprised me.  Craig Silverman‘s numerical findings showing that “the legitimate news stories outperformed the fake ones in the early months of the 2016 election campaign. But in the last three months, fake news sources saw their engagement surge” is difficult to argue with.  Apparently the fake news was popular on most everybody’s news feeds, not just mine.  The article by Laura Sydell was very interesting, to see where this fake news actually stems from.  (It was also a bit creepy when they detailed how, exactly, they tracked down this guy.)  So really, this fake news can stem from anyone, anywhere.

While it seems that fake news is primarily spread through social media platforms, I do not feel that it is the platform’s job to monitor what is fake and what is not.  I think people should be allowed to share whatever they wish on their social media.  It is the people who should be more aware of what they are reading and sharing.  Facebook should not be your primary news source.  It never hurts to take a quick glance at the url of an article.  Hint: nytimes.com is usually good and some random site you’ve never heard of before means you should probably do more research yourself.

Cue the Cloud

Do I use the Cloud? Yes. Yes I do. In fact, when I pause to think about it, I realize that my everyday life revolves around my use of the Cloud.  I have almost 40 GB of pictures, documents, and random “stuff” saved to Google Drive (Thanks for the unlimited Drive storage, ND!).  My phone has an iCloud Backup. Then, this past week, I realized just how much of my life, as well as other people’s lives, actually relies on the Cloud when Amazon Web Services went down.  Thanks to a little mistake from “some poor engineer at Amazon Web Services“, I found myself unable to access my schoolwork on Sakai, a friend at another university was unable to access study materials for his upcoming midterm, I couldn’t post a file to share with other students on Piazza, I couldn’t work on a portal for AWS EC2 instances that I was making for my job…the list goes on.

So what is this “Cloud” that we now seem to revolve around like we do the sun?  According to Quentin Hardy, “cloud computing refers to an efficient method of managing lots of computer servers, data storage and networking.”  As a consumer, there are so many advantages to using the Cloud.  As I explained earlier, I use it in many aspects of my life, and the Cloud makes it extraordinarily easy to always have things available.  I can access files from all of my devices and I don’t have to worry about backing things up.  However, when things do go wrong, like they did this past Tuesday, it seems catastrophic.  I’d say the major disadvantage to using the Cloud as a consumer is that when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong (or at least it seems that way!).

As a developer, I have some experience with the Cloud in using Amazon Web Services for my on-campus job.  Most of it has just been done as a learning experience, but I am happy with how those experiences have gone.  It’s incredibly convenient having, as Cade Metz put it, “a virtually unlimited amount of computing power.”  Moving forward, obviously I will need to continue using it at my job, for as long as my boss keeps telling me to use it.  But I think I would use the Cloud for my own projects too.

Of course, one must call into question the ethical issues behind the Cloud as well.  We are basically storing our data on unknown servers.  Do we trust the people who have access to these servers not to touch our data?  For me, I say that yes, I trust the Cloud.  But at the same time, I don’t have any confidential files on my phone or in my Google Drive, so really I would not be hugely affected by a loss or leaking of data.  I think present-day technology is already in the Age of the Cloud, and there’s very little we can do to stop that right now.  I think the best thing to do is just to roll with it and the more time spent using and developing the Cloud, the better it will become over time.

Snowden: Hero or Traitor?

In June 2013, Edward Snowden leaked classified NSA information.  He met journalists of The Guardian and The Post in Hong Kong to share secrets of the US government.  Michael Hayden, CNN’s Terrorism Analyst, says that Snowden’s actions hurt in three important ways.  First, it informed American adversaries of the “tactics, techniques, and procedures” of the CIA.  Second, it had a negative economic impact on many United States businesses that did comply with the law.  Third, Snowden’s actions convinced the rest of the world that the the United States government was completely unable “to do anything discreetly or keep anything secret.”

Based on all the information made available on the situation, I have a very difficult time classifying Snowden as either a hero or a traitor with sufficient evidence.  There are other people who hold strong opinions one way or the other.  For example, in The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin claims “Edward Snowden is No Hero” and says, “He is neither [a hero nor a whistle-blower]. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.”  On the other hand, hearing Snowden’s own account of his actions and intentions gives a very different outlook on what went down.  In his own words in The New York Times, Edward Snowden says the outcome is “the power of an informed public” and continues on to say, “As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.”  He just felt that the American public had the right to know what the American government was really doing.

I think my general thoughts on Edward Snowden and his actions most closely coincide with those of Zachary Keck.  From his article title, we can see that he believes that “Yes, Edward Snowden is a Traitor.”  But he goes on to say that this is not because of what Snowden did, leaking the information.  Rather, it is how Snowden went about doing these things that puts him in the wrong.  He argues that Edward Snowden should have first tried to go directly to the government to address his concerns.  In addition, Keck argues, “a true patriotic whistleblower believes in his or her cause enough to be willing to accept the punishment their disclosures bring. If they truly believe in the righteousness of their cause, they’ll be confident enough that the American people will ultimately come to appreciate their actions and they’ll be pardoned.”  I agree with this.  If Snowden truly believed in the value of his actions, he would not have run away to Russia and would instead face the music awaiting him at home.  In the end, I would not see it as entirely farfetched that Snowden believed he was helping and informing the American public.  However, how he went about doing so caused far more destruction beyond the American borders.

Hidden Figures – Project 2

For our second project, my group decided to watch and review the new movie Hidden Figures.  The podcast of our review can be found here.

It is challenging for women and minorities to break into STEM fields because of the past and current state of diversity in these fields.  People are used to what they know.  Even when there are individuals like Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who set a new precedent for those who are under represented, it is difficult to change the norm.  It is hard for those in the field to accept those who are different and it is similarly difficult for the minorities in the field to feel welcome and want to stay.  Women and minorities in STEM face further difficulties when they are often judged on a different scale than their white male peers and colleagues.  A woman or person of color must perform at a much higher level in order to be perceived as an equal within the field.

Having role models while growing up is incredibly important.  Children don’t see race or gender.  These are social constructs that are taught to them as they grow up.  Adults define the options within these categories and they decide where people fall within these options.  The role models in our lives are the ones who show us who we can be, despite the boxes that others try to put us in.  Growing up, my dad was my role model.  He worked hard to make technology prevalent in our household and always encouraged my and my brothers’ interests in math and science.  Beyond that, he raised me to be a strong female.  I was never given special treatment for being “the girl” in our family, I was taught to value hard work and commitment, and, most importantly, my dreams were always supported, whether I was 6 and wanted to be an Archaeologist, or 13 and wanted to be a Rockette, or 18 and decided to pursue Computer Science.

The Challenger

The date was January 28, 1986.  People around the United States watched as the space shuttle Challenger was launched into the sky.  Within moments, excitement turned to horror as the Challenger exploded.  All 7 crew members were lost that day.  The New York Times claims this event as “one of the worst accidents of the American space program.”  It was a tragedy for the entire nation.  But what really happened that day?

The simple answer to “what went wrong” is that the weather was cold that morning causing the O ring seals on the rocket booster to fail.  This released hot gas that ignited a fuel tank.  It’s easy to say that this could have been prevented.  The O rings had been a problem in the past and the team had been warned that day to postpone the launch until the weather was a bit warmer.  It’s easy to point fingers and say the incident could have been prevented, but it’s hard to say who is really to blame.

There are engineers who had warned NASA about the dangers before the incident even occurred.  Roger Boisjoly, an engineer of the space shuttle working for Morton Thiokol, a NASA contractor, warned them not to go through with the launch the night before, and they did anyway with disastrous consequences.  I think Roger Boisjoly was right in his whistleblowing.  He and his colleagues knew of the dangers and did everything in their power to stop the launch.  NASA tried to keep it quiet by telling all their employees not to talk to reporters.  But Boisjoly and other engineers shared what they knew with the Rogers Commission and brought the truth about the O rings to light.  People deserved to know the truth about the incident, if only to prevent similar tragedies in the future.  Personally I think Boisjoly did the right thing.

Was his company justified in their retaliation?  It’s hard to say.  I can understand why they were angry and I do believe in some level of company loyalty.  However, I do not think they were right in destroying Boisjoly’s career.  He did the right thing.  He warned against the potential dangers and later pointed out those who were at fault for the incident.  I think it’s really sad that Boisjoly once said that the incident “destroyed my career, my life, everything else.”  He did the right thing and if people had listened to him in the first place, other people’s lives could have been spared too.

Code Like a Champion Today…

In previous blog posts, I’ve mentioned various frustrations I’ve had with being a female in the tech industry.  To me, it should not matter what my ethnic background looks like nor how I choose to identify my gender.  Both my successes and my failures should be taken as a result of my work, not my race or gender.

I wholeheartedly agree that diversity is a problem in the tech industry.  I look around the classroom and future places of employment and tech environments portrayed in media and I find myself surrounded by white males.  It can be disheartening to know that the odds are against you from the moment that you decide that you want to pursue a career path.

I do appreciate that tech companies have begun to recognize diversity as a problem that needs to be addressed.  However, I do not necessarily agree that they are attempting to remedy this problem in the correct manner.  Murrey Jacobson quotes Vivek Wadhwa saying, “Look at all the companies that are now adding women to their boards because they were shamed into it.”  Is this really how we want women to be placed in positions of leadership?  Because companies felt pressured to appear “diverse” and “inclusive”?  Leadership positions should be given to those who have proven themselves worthy to the company through hard work and dedication.  Should a “diverse” individual be offered a higher position than another candidate who is better suited for the job, the company benefits only through a statistic, rather than the company as a whole benefitting.

Other companies are doing a little better than the companies mentioned above.  Rather than simply selecting a leader based on gender or race, they put measures in place to try to remove any bias and give everyone equal opportunity.  However, in Elizabeth Dwoskin‘s article, she says “Big changes to hiring practices are slow to happen in any industry. And many diversity programs have been known to backfire.  In a recent study of 830 companies that had implemented compulsory diversity training for managers, researchers found that numbers of African American women and Asian American men and women decreased five years after.”  Why is this? What’s wrong with these programs and why are they having the opposite effect than originally intended?

I think the solution to the lack of diversity in the tech industry comes into play far before a woman enters the workforce or tries for a position of leadership.  I think it lies in the formative years.  Had you asked me before this assignment to select a more specific time frame, I would have said middle school.  I think between the ages of 10 and 14, women and members of other under-represented groups should be encouraged to pursue STEM-related interests as they build their foundations for high school, college, and their future careers.  This builds their knowledge base as well as their confidence and courage to continue down this path.  However, after reading this article from CNN about the lack of confidence from 6 year olds, I’m beginning to think that the solution to the future of the tech industry begins as soon as children begin their schooling.  Gender stereotypes need to be thrown out and both little boys and girls need to be taught that they are capable of pursuing any career they wish, regardless of their gender.

Work Hard, Play Harder

Work-life balance is a tricky thing.  It’s something I’ve juggled for many years, even since high school.  My parents always insisted that school, my “work”, come first.  Back in high school, it did; that took up most of my time.  But at the same time, I had band and dance, my “life”, both things that I loved.  I came to college and my parents were no longer policing my time.  Schoolwork, band, and dance all began pulling equal weight.  There have been times over the past 4 years that I’ve looked around and said, “Wow, I’m so lucky.  I get to do everything that I love.  Maybe you really can have it all!”  But that’s not true.  If I focused more on school, my grades would probably be better.  If I spent more time practicing, I’d probably be a stronger performer.  If I gave up even just one of those things, I’d probably get healthy amounts of sleep each night and not have to shovel down my dinner in 20 minutes (including in and out of the dining hall) between rehearsals.  But at the end of the day, I’m lucky that I got to spend 4 years doing everything I love.

However, my work-life balance thus far has consisted of me, myself, and I.  What happens when I have a family of my own and my happiness is suddenly dependent on my husband and my X children’s happiness?  Anne-Marie Slaughter explains that in her public lecture at Oxford, “Just about all of the women in that room planned to combine careers and family in some way. But almost all assumed and accepted that they would have to make compromises that the men in their lives were far less likely to have to make.”  I already know that I am one of those women.  I know that I will have to compromise my career to build my family.  It’s something that I’ve known for a long time, but as I get older I now realize, it’s something that I want to do, when the time comes.

When I was younger, I looked around and saw that my mom was always home with us while my dad worked 9-5, always home in time for dinner and evening extra-curricular activities.  I thought it was just a matter of life in my house.  It wasn’t until I got older that I understood why, exactly, my parents fell into the gender stereotypes like they did.  My parents both met at work in the Philippines.  Then, my dad got a job offer here in the States for Y2K.  The job offer came with a 2 year working visa for my dad and a dependent visa for my mom.  This meant that my mom couldn’t work in the US for 2 years, or until my dad’s company had secured their green cards.  When I came along less than a year later, there was nothing to think about.  My mom became the stay-at-home parent because she couldn’t work anyway, and my dad remained the working parent to ensure not only a steady financial income, but also our place in America.  Once my younger brothers were also in school, my parents had finally become US citizens and my mom was able to start working part-time.  Her accounting days are long gone, but she enjoys her job and her part-time status leaves her still able to be a full-time mom.

When I look forward to my future, that is similar to what I see for myself as well.  I want to give up my career to raise my family.  When I do eventually return to the work force, I don’t foresee myself returning to the tech industry – it moves too quickly and I don’t want that kind of stress while trying to raise a family anyway.  I honestly think I’m going to end up teaching after having kids.  But this whole work-life balance thing?  I don’t see it as a sacrifice.  I don’t see myself staying in the tech industry for the rest of my life, whether or not I have a family.  But when I’m ready to start a family, that’s when I’ll know it’s time for me to move on to bigger and better things.