Month: April 2018

Question: After reading the articles, do you believe that coding is the new literacy? Should everyone be exposed or required to take a computer science or coding class?

 

With the rapid rise of technology in America, businesses have become increasingly dependent on coders to help expand their company, the only problem is there seems to be a short supply of capable coders.  The main reason for this is fairly simple, most students are not exposed to coding before college, and therefore do not have an interest in it. Additional factors include the perception that coding is reserved for super-geniuses like Zuckerberg and Musk, and that a typical high school student isn’t smart enough to learn coding. These are issues that need to be addressed if America is going to continue to be a hub for tech innovation, and many people from politicians to CEO’s are committed to fixing this problem. On the political side, both Obama and Trump introduced legislation aimed at boosting coding literacy in the public school system. Additionally, private organizations such as CS4All have made similar pushes to get more children coding at a younger age. Those who support such efforts argue that computer literacy is a necessary part of today’s world, and even if you don’t use your coding knowledge to land a job at Google, there are still innumerable applications of coding knowledge in almost any job field. Additionally, learning to code teaches children dynamic problem solving, and being able to work through problems using a different approach than the step-by-step solutions they may be taught in a traditional math or science class. However, just like everything else in this class, this problem does not have a clear answer. Opponents of coding programs like CS4All argue that introducing computer science into middle schools is easier said than done, as the people who would know enough about coding to teach a class on it would rather take a coding job than a public teaching job. Additionally, considering how fast the tech landscape changes, it would be difficult to keep curriculum up to date with current trends in the software community, risking teaching students outdated practices/languages.

In my opinion, every K-12 student should be exposed to computer science at least once in their high school careers. I think that the more software-focused concepts, such as programming should certainly be offered to K-12 students everywhere because it gives students with interest a chance to try out coding at a young age instead of waiting until college. However, I think computer literacy and computational thinking are applicable to pretty much any job field, and I think every K-12 student should go through at least one class that focuses on these broad concepts without getting into the nitty gritty of actual coding. If schools have difficulty fitting in a required CS class, I would suggest removing one elective slot for each student in high school (my school gave students multiple elective opportunities each year, so this shouldn’t be difficult) and replacing it with a required class to teach students the basics of computer literacy and computational thinking.

As far as programming aptitude, I am a firm believer that anyone can learn anything if they dedicate enough time to it and receive the proper support, and coding is no different. Most people tend to either give up on something they are not good at too quickly, or do not have good enough teachers to facilitate proper learning.  If the student does posses dedication, interest, and the necessary support, they should be able to become successful coders regardless of innate ability. As far as the question of should everyone learn to program, I think the answer is no. While I agree that compute literacy and computational thinking are applicable in most fields, I do not think that students should be forced to learn a language that very well may be outdated in 5 years. If they are interested in pursuing a tech degree, that’s great and they should have the opportunity to take coding classes and see if its the right fit for them, but to force every student to learn a programming language seems like it would be a waste of time for a lot of students, and a waste of money for public schools.

Topic: Patents

 

Patents have a long history in America, dating back to 1790, when Congress enacted the first Patent Act. Since then, patent laws have been changing and expanding, but the base concept of what patents are and why they are used has remained mostly the same. The most obvious benefit of a patent is that it provides people and companies an incentive to invent. There would be no point in wasting time and money trying to invent a new procedure or concept if you knew that the moment it was invented it would be reverse engineered by your competitors, and then people who contributed nothing to the invention would have just as much claim to make money off of it as you do. In fact, patent researchers have estimated that R&D research totaling 430 billion euros in 2008 would have been significantly reduced or even eliminated if companies did not have a means to protect their inventions from exploitation. Additionally, patents encourage disclosure of inventions to the public domain, while still setting a fixed time (usually 20 years) where the inventor retains a monopoly on the invention. This is very beneficial because it allows competitors to work off of an invention without directly using it, encouraging more competition and innovation in the future. It also prevents inventions from being lost to the World if an inventor dies without disclosing his/her process for making an invention. I believe patents are a positive force in the business world. Not only do they provide a significant incentive for R&D, but they also ensure that people will never have to waste time inventing something twice, which means humanity can continue to invent technologies which address the most pressing needs of the time. Additionally, I like that patents encourage companies to come up with multiple solutions to a problem. Instead of copying another company’s invention, a competitor would have to find their own way to accomplish the same task without infringing on the first company’s patent. This leads to a diversification of products which is not only good for businesses but is also good for the consumer.

In recent years, patent law has come under fire as technology has advanced, and people have come up with ways to “cheat” the patent system in America. As far as technology, the advent of software patents has been met with significant controversy, as established companies like Google and Microsoft have stockpiled software patents out of fear that their competitors would patent the technology first. Some have argued that this stockpiling of patents is largely trivial, and that software is not something that needs to be patented. I disagree with this sentiment. I believe that a software innovation is just as significant as a tangible, physical invention, and should therefore be protected by the same laws. If anything, the software patent stockpile race has only increased innovation in Silicon Valley and made companies work harder to make new technologies before a competitor does. However, there is an uglier side to stockpiling patents: the advent of patent trolls. A patent troll is a person or company who acquires patents not with the intent to commercialize the invention patented, but rather to litigate against companies who infringe on the patent. This can be a huge problem, as the patent office has a bad reputation of granting patents for very broad inventions. For example, a patent was granted to a patent troll that gave it exclusive rights to in-ap purchasing technology, and the company then went on to litigate at least 11 companies for using “their” technology. I do not believe patent trolls are an indication that the patent system is broken by any means, just that it is imperfect. Patents only last for around 20 years, so the mistakes of the patent office in granting overly broad patents do not have permanent repercussions. In order to fix the system, I would say that in the future the patent office should work to not grant patents for inventions that are simplistic or overly broad, and instead only try to reward patents for inventions that exhibit true innovation in a field. While this line may certainly be hard to define at times, it is much better than having no patents at all.

Topic: Self Driving Cars

 

Self driving cars have become a big topic of conversation in recent years as technology advances have made the possibility of their wide spread integration into society more conceivable. However, like any new technology autonomous vehicles have made been met with a good amount of controversy. Those who are proponents of self driving cars argue that they would make roads much safer. Driving is something which requires both skill and attention, and sometimes drivers do not give their full attention to the road, or are otherwise just not good enough at driving to drive safely. Drunk driving, for example, is a huge problem in America, and is something that autonomous vehicles could virtually eliminate if they were fully adopted into society. Additionally, if people did not have to spend time driving, they could use the time to be more productive, either doing work or reading a book while their car drove them to work. This could lead to huge economic benefits, because people would have more time to do things and less time wasted behind the wheel. There are, however, people who are opposed to the idea of integrating self driving cars into roads. The main issue people use to argue this point is that the technology is simply not good enough as of now to have self driving cars that meet ethical safety standards. For example, if road lines are covered, by snow or dirt, a self driving car would have a real problem determining how to stay in its lane, while a human driver would be able to use intuition to see where the road leads. Further, if a self driving car sees something it does not recognize in its neural net, such as a stop sign with a unique sticker on it, it may not be able to identify the item correctly, which could lead to crashes. I believe self driving cars would absolutely make our roads safer. I think that even if the technology is not perfect, the self driving cars most companies are producing as of now are safe enough that they could be used in extreme cases, like if you’re drunk or extremely tired, to drastically minimize the risk of an accident.

 

As far as social concerns surrounding self driving cars, I believe that if it came down to a situation where the car had to decide whether to either risk the lives of the passengers or an outside party, it should react in the same way a human driver would. When humans are faced with this split second decision, their reflex is always to protect themselves, so I think the car should do the same. Additionally, I would not feel comfortable getting into a car that I know is not designed to protect me in those types of situations. It also think in the case of accidents they should be examined on a case by case basis. If the situation was unavoidable, then I do not think anyone should be liable because sometimes those situations do arise. However, if the situation was avoidable then the root cause of the error in the self driving car should be discovered, and the person or company responsible for that error should be liable.

 

I think that self driving cars are an inevitability in America. When they eventually become widespread, I think that there will need to be a lot of laws passed to ensure that companies are making the cars as safe as possible, and standards should be put in place for both the software and the hardware inside the cars to make sure companies cannot put cars on the road that may risk lives. As far as social and economic concerns, I think self driving cars will be great for both areas of American life. Socially, people will have more time to do the things they enjoy instead of driving. Economically, people will be more productive because they can swap out their commutes for extra sleeping time or work time.

 

I would definitely own a self driving car, but I would not use it all the time. I think I would only use it in “easy” driving scenarios, such as a long stretch of driving on the highway. If conditions were bad, or if I was in a more densely populated area, I would probably not put as much faith in the technology and would opt to drive manually. Also, I would definitely want a Tesla, because I like that software updates can be sent to the car so the self driving technology will always be improving.

 

 

Topic: Artificial Intelligence

 

Artificial intelligence is an area of technology that has become increasingly important in recent years, and has the potential to be a great tool for improving humanity in the future.  At its base level, AI is just any computer program that does a job that is normally reserved for people. This is a broad definition, though, and there are many different subsets of AI that contain vastly different technologies.  Strong AI is a term which refers to programs that aim to mimic exactly how the human brain operates, and use that logic to complete their tasks. Weak AI, on the other hand, is only concerned with getting a task done, and does not care what the logic flow of the computer program is to achieve that task. There also exists AI’s which fall in between the two definitions. These programs use human cognition as a general model for their operation, but fall short of replicating the human through process. Although these systems may follow a similar logic flow as the human brain, as discussed later, I believe their lack of emotion and comprehension separates them from human intelligence.

Some of the more famous AI systems, such as Deep Blue or Watson are all viable implementations of AI because they all follow the broad goal of AI: to do a task that a human would normally do. The question of how impressive each of these systems are, though, can certainly be up for debate. I think that the most impressive of the AI systems are the ones that use neural nets, because they are essentially learning from experience rather than being hardwired to do certain things, just like how humans learn. But no matter how advanced and impressive these programs become, the question still remains: do these programs constitute actual intelligence? One test which has been proposed as a check for human level intelligence is the turing test, which states that if you can have a conversation with an AI program which is so realistic that you can’t tell you’re talking to a computer, then the test is passed and the program is said to have human level intelligence. A rebuttal to this test is the Chinese room thought experiment, which essentially claims that although a program may be able to “converse” in Chinese, the program doesn’t really understand Chinese, it is just following a set of predetermined prompts. By this logic, a human could follow the same prompts as the computer program, and “converse” with someone in Chinese without ever knowing how to speak Chinese. I think that this is a correct way to distinguish human intelligence from artificial intelligence, and is the reason that AI will never match the level of cognition humans have. Even with advanced concepts like neural nets, AI programs still don’t contain any level of understanding or self awareness in what they are doing, they are simply just doing whichever action is weighted the best according to an algorithm, and because of this they will never be able to match human comprehension. In this same sense, I do not believe AI could ever have morality because a computer algorithm could never really understand the value of a human life. In order to do this you need emotions, you need to think compassionately instead of following a set of commands, and this is something that AI will never be able to do.

As far as fears about AI, I believe that these are largely unwarranted. Just as with any new technology, there is always initial skepticism, and the possibility for things to go wrong. But at the same time it seems that the same companies developing AI are very aware of what could go wrong, and are working diligently to keep AI safe. For this reason I am not necessarily worried about AI from a safety perspective, but am far more concerned about how AI will impact human culture. If AI continues to develop at the rate it is, many humans may find their jobs obsolete in the near future, which would mean that people would need to find new ways to make money and occupy themselves. I think if anything this is the main concern over AI, and is something which could majorly affect the sociopolitical climate of the world in the coming decades.

 

 

Topic: Fake News

 

Fake news can be defined as any news story which is meant to intentionally mislead its readers in order to get them to believe something untrue about a person or entity. This type of news has become increasingly popular in the 21st century, as social media sharing allows fake news stories to spread much faster than they could when news was printed. Additionally, the advent of online revenue has given companies incentive to sensationalize their headlines to attract readers who will bring them add revenue, a method commonly referred to as “clickbait”.  Personally, I have not seen very much fake news on my Facebook feed, and I deleted my twitter a while ago. In the instances when I do see fake news, the headlines are usually so ridiculous that I know right away I am being mislead.  I think the best way to recognize fake news is to be very skeptical of headlines that sound too wild to be true. Also, it is important to make sure you are reading news from a reputable news source, which I believe has become harder and harder to determine in recent years. A failsafe method is to use politifact or snopes to check headlines you are skeptical of, as these sites will give you unbiased answers as to what is true on the internet. Personally, I do not get any of my news from social media, and instead have the Apple news app set up on my phone so the news updates I receive are from sources I know I can trust. For people who are worried about being in a filter bubble, I would say the best thing to do is switch up your news sources to more dependable sites (npr, reuters, etc.) and to also use the methods I described above for fact checking headlines that seem suspicious.

I believe fake news should definitely be regulated to a certain extent. While it may be difficult to identify articles which take quotes out of context or use correct but misleading visual figures, it should not be allowed for blatantly untrue Facebook or Twitter articles to be posted to the sites. I believe these sites have a responsibility to their users to keep them from being mislead, and to make sure that if an article is presented as news on a website, it actually is news.  While fake news is certainly a grey area in some cases, it would not be difficult to filter out articles which are simply untrue, and it seems as though a lot of these kind of articles exist on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. It would be important, though, for companies to be very transparent about what they are censoring and how they are doing it, because censoring fake news could quickly turn into censoring undesirable news, such as Facebook’s privacy scandal, without the proper guidelines in place.

I believe the focus on fake news is very warranted. It has already been discovered that fake news had an impact in the 2016 presidential election, and while we may never know to what extent it impacted the election, I think its pretty clear that this problem needs to be solved before it grows out of control. If companies like Facebook and Google do not do the right thing and begin to filter fake news, I fear it will become increasingly difficult to find news you can trust, and people will either go around believing things that aren’t true, or will have to spend an arduous amount of time fact checking the news they receive, which should not be necessary.