Age of AI

  

In class we watched the documentary the Age of AI and it was a very interesting documentary film. The documentary looks into the role that AI plays in our daily lives and how it's presence in society is growing. Actor Robert Downey Jr is the narrator for this film. We know AI to be present in the online world however it is growing everywhere and becoming bigger in every industry and aspect of human life. 

I was very surprised about how many jobs will be lost due to AI since this will make income inequality worse for the world. This could also cause unemployment rates to go up for the humans who are trying to keep their jobs. It is very surprising that there are jobs out there that AI should do instead of everyday people like all of us. Another big trend with AI is the development of self driving cars and the transportation system. This would be amazing since this could help cut down on traffic and would help with infastructure down the road. 

The documentary also showed off some of the developments that countries are trying to make with AI and it's software. The three countries that are working really hard to develop AI include Russia, China and the United States of America. 

When it comes to AI we need to be careful about how we use it in our daily lives since less information is becoming private and AI can do anything with some of this info. AI needs to be regulated since we need to have policies in place of how it's used and how it should be used. AI is no doubt a wonderful tool for certain things but it also can be harmful if it is compromised and we all need to keep learning about the wonders of AI so that we can use it appropriately. It is really important that we take these steps to working with AI so that we the people can have some privacy in this world. 

EOTO #2 Reaction

 In class we heard about different communication techniques that provide very important information about things involving government and society. 

One of the presentations I found very interesting was about whistleblowers. This is when an employee, formal, or current, finds some illegal activity going on in the workplace they were associated with and then leak it or report it to the authorities. Whistle blowers are a major problem for the government and there have been whistle blowers over the years involved with the US government. Edward Snowden is a primary example of this and he leaked a lot of information in 2013 from the National Security Agency. He revealed info on Five Eyes intelligence program along with other programs. He caused a lot of secret data to be released about the United States government and after he violated the Espionage Act of 1917, he, went to Russia and sought asylum. He was granted it in 2013 for one year and in 2014 he was granted it for a longer period. He is now a Russian citizen and has been living their permenantly. 

Another presentation that I found interesting was the presentation on Cord Cutting which is the process of cancelling all of your satellite TV subscriptions and choosing the alternate streaming services that provide a variety of different on-demand entertainment options available that is present at all times from different locations. This is a new and revolutionary piece of media and concept and I have to say I very much like the idea of it. I actually am considering participating in this movement after this presentation. It's a great idea and I can't wait to see it grow in the years to follow. 

Diffusion of Innovations

The Diffusion of Innovations Theory is a theory that essentially explains how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology are spread. These ideas are spread through different stages and channels based on different sizes of groups. I thought this theory was very interesting and I think it is great how these ideas are thought of and developed and adopted by different people. This theory was created by Everett Rogers in 1962 and has been related to different kinds of technology over the years. 

This picture below is Everett Rogers. 

There are five different adopter categories where these ideas are taken under consideration 

1. Innovators are the first people in this first stage and these are the people that get this product from the very start. This stage includes around 2.5% of people who use this technology. These are the people who use the product from the start and out of all the people in this group they are the group that takes risks. These are people who want to try products and use them no matter what the outcome is. 

2. Around 13.5% of people are the early adopters and these are the people that believe that change is needed for success. These are people's opinions that you can trust and you normally can ask them about the product. At this stage is when the product begins to become more popular overtime. 

3. 34% of these people are the early majority and these are the ones who like to see the full capacity of the product. They want to see to make sure it works and is good. 

4. The other 34% of people in this group are the late majority and these people are normally against change at first but, they will eventually come around and buy the product if they are really challenged to. 

5. The final 16% of these people are called Laggards. These people are normally against buying the product and they are very conservative. They don't want to steer away from their beliefs or ideas. 

One of the biggest innovations that I can relate to the diffusion theory is the concept of music streaming. This is something that has been becoming extremely popular over the last few years especially with technology continuing to become more available to everybody more easily all the time. This has been adopted by many recently and I am going to explain the users of music streaming platforms such as Spotify and where they fit into this theory. 

When it comes to the innovator stage the people that can be grouped within this stage these are tech savvy people who developed this invention and also tech enthusiasts along with some music enthusiasts. These people appreciate Spotify's amazing approach to music streaming and the execution of it. 

The general public was the early adopters and early majority portion of the service. One of the biggest reasons this is because of their "Freemium business model". How this works is that users could use the basic model of this app and listen to music with ads and not pay for the premium plan. A fair amount of people would later go on and purchase the premium plan of the app and Spotify would go on to gain most of their market share here. 

Then there are the late adopters such as myself. This includes people who were skeptical to joining Spotify or people who were using different formats to listen to their music such as cds and vinyl. This group will then join Spotify later after the slower uptake of the platform. 

The last stage is the laggards phase where these are the people who are against the change and also who have limited access to digital tools. 

This theory is only going to continue to grow with new forms of media and technology thart are being developed. 

EOTO #2: Total Information Awareness

 Total Information Awareness was a mass detection program by the United States Information Awareness Office in 2003. Total Information Awareness was described as the closest thing to a "Big Brother" program that the United States government has ever orchestrated. The program was founded after 9/11 and was also described as Manhattan Project for counter terrorism. 

The whole program was based around predictive policing and was meant to take detailed information and data about people in order to prevent terrorist incidents before their execution. This would allow the government to sort through different people and try to identify terrorists. Since now the amounts of both private and public information is growing by the minute this government project was a very frightening thing to all of us since this program let the government have access to everything we are doing. 

Total Information Awareness was run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency which happens to be the branch of the Department of Defense that works on military research. This was headed by John Poindexter who was a Regan era National Security Adviser who was involved in the Iran Contra Scandal. 

Total Information Awareness was intended to be a five year research program and the goal behind this program is was designed to integrate previous government surveillance programs into this one. These integrated programs included Genoa which predated TIA and provided some of the backing for the new software. It's successor Project Genoa II was originally designed into the the TIA program using computers, software agents, policy makers, and field operatives could cooperate. This would allow humans and machines to think together and cooperate while observing what people are doing. This research also had originally planned to include the National Security Agency, The CIA, DIA, and so many more. 

Some of the elements that would help track our moves and data at the time would be computers, cameras, location sensors, and different types of wireless communication. The commercialization of data in this country would also help this program thrive since corporations have lots of very detailed information about people. 

Some of the downsides of the program is that this program was going to eliminate some elements of privacy. As some said it would kill privacy in America since under this program our lives would be made available to government officials and we would be very restricted in what we can do. Our lives would have been open books realistically. Another major downside is that it is based observations and surveillance even when there is no clear evidence of involvement in wrongdoing. This would essentially ruin America's values about freedom. One of the biggest downsides of this program is that it is mainly based on speculation and assumptions of all instead of focused and this is another reason this program was not predicted to work also there were security concerns with TIA in that it could reduce security by taking from more effective tools such as on the ground foreign intelligence which is needed. 

The Total Information Awareness program ended very shortly less than a year after it was founded and it's funding was cut by Congress in 2003. This was canceled because of the privacy concerns and vocal opposition by both some government officials and the general public. The effort was lead by some senators to cut finding and cancel the program. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Will we ever have privacy again? Since more programs are continuing to be developed like this one and there are some rumors that this still exists within the NSA today.