5.1 Effects of Computing Innovations - Lesson Notes

  • Machines have fostered progress and creativity in medical field, engineering, communications, and even art However computing innovations can also have downsides:
  • digital divide
  • bias
  • legal/ethical concerns
  • internet safety
  • Dopamine
  • Additionally you could have loss of privacy, replacement of humans for jobs, over dependence on technology, and negative health consequences.
  • Example: AI, machine learning, and data mining have greatly benefitted many fields, but also cause bias and unintended discrimination To be a responsible programmer, it is important to look at the bigger picture, and understand the effects of any computing innovation they create.

5.1 Blog Reflection Questions

  1. COme up with three of your own beneficial and corresponding harmful effects of computing?
    • Computers can help with different jobs, for example robot assisted surgery. A corresponding harm is that as jobs become more and more computerized, there may be a time where computer jobs surpass human labor.
    • Computers help spread information and can be used for education. A corresponding harm is that it can also spread misinformation and harmful bias, epecially to younger, more impressionable people.
    • Technology can help form communities of like-minded people. A corresponding harm is that technology can also drive wedges, and decrease the amount of face-to-face communication .
  2. Talk about dopamine issues above? Anything that is impacting your personal study and success in High School?
    • Social media, video games, and other forms of interactive technology have proved to become addicting by allowing our brains to release dopamine. This addiction is negative because it forces time away from things such as school and spending time with friends/family. This actually did affect me heavily to the point where I would have to sacrifice my own health and sleep in order to catch up on school work that I could’ve done without the presence of my phone. Because of this I deleted social media off of my phone and since then, I have fixed the issue of my sleep schedule. I think this addiction is truly dangerous and affects many people at Del Norte.

5.2 Digital Divide - Lesson Notes

Causes of digital divide:

  • Digital divide: the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet and those who do not. As technology evoloves the digital divide presents equal participation and oppurtunity in all parts of life, affecting people in certain countries, and households with low income.
  • Poor or rural areas in the world have less access to technology
  • Also some countries have restricted access At Del Norte:
  • Internet blockers
  • Need for personal computers
  • Internet safety

5.2 Blog Reflection Questions

  1. How does someone empower themself in a digital world?
  • Digital literacy allows for a plethora of things that lead to self empowerment. These things include self learning, self sustainability, access to more oppurtunities, and interest based skill development.
    1. How does someone that is empowered help someone that is not empowered? Describe something you could do at Del Norte HS?
  • Empowered people can provide unempowered people by providing with a platform to empower themselves. Del Norte high school for example, provides many of their students with chromebooks.
    1. Is paper or red tape blocking digital empowerment? Are there barriers like this at Del Norte?
  • There are many barriers in our world that prevent the digital empowerment of certain people. One barrier at Del Norte is a financial barrier. Many aren’t able to be digitally empowered because they lack access to proper technology.

5.3 and 5.4 Notes

The hacks for this section are to summarize and give our takes on the discussion from class.

Algorithmic Bias

Computers can be biased in serveral ways:

  • Data (Discussed through training data of hp facial recognition software): data used to train a machine learning model can contain biases such as data sets that underepresent a certain group and therefore make unfair decisions about said groups.
  • Algorithms : Algorithms can be buil twith bias. Again, facial recognition software: darker skin tones yield higher fail rate for facial recognition software
  • Humans who designed algorithms, etc may be biased themselves (conspiracies we discussed in class)

It is crucial to know and understand that technology can contain bias too and to consider that while writing your own algorithms.

Discussions:

Female AI voices:

  • We discussed that when designed, this AI may have had human basis or originate from stereotyping, we concluded that this voice was probably just a default that people just seemed to enjoy more. In an effort to meet peoples’ expectations, they most likely just designed it that way.

Are Hp computers racist:

  • I believe that Hp computers are not racist. For one, more data on people of color is required to make a conclusion. Secondly, it is clearly the training data that is faulty not the people neccesarliy selling the laptop. To avoid data bias we discussed the importance of crowd surfing through the use of online surveys.

5.4 Notes

  • Crowdsourcing: Using large, diverse, and quite random groups of people to get unbiased and pure data. In order to do this it is important to consider location, demographic, etc.
  • An excellent example of crowdsourcing we see in our class is through Rapid API. Some of that data, relating to surveys and people must have come from excellent crowd surfer
  • How could del norte help with crowdsources? we could ask people are our school to use our two main databases in order to give feedback about mainly the UI and to test if the program works with multipe people. We would have more perspective and therefore less bias so let’s begin the survey as son as possible.

5.5 and 5.6 Notes

5.5 Notes

  • In the discussion we began by discussing the benefits and harms of copyright. We decided that the main harm is limitations when borrowing art or building off of it seen especially in youtube and the greatest benefit is allowing owners to be properly credited for their hard work.
  • We also talked about how unfair it is when creator’s get their work misused or ‘stolen’. To avoid this, we use liscences (even on Github) to protect our work

    5.5 Hacks Reflection

    When you create a GitHub repository it requests a license type. Review the license types in relationship to this Tech Talk and make some notes in your personal blog.

  • Each license is unique in the needs they tend to and privacies they guarentee. After discussing, we came to the conclusion that the MIT license was the best because it allows versions of our original work to be used as long as we are credited. This is important because our project provides a framework for buisnesses such as cat cafes so allowing the public to use our project is essentially the entire purpose. In your blog, summarize the discussions and personal analysis on Software Licenses/Options, Digital Rights, and other Legal and Ethical thoughts from this College Board topic. (restated)
  • In the discussion we began by discussing the benefits and harms of copyright. We decided that the main harm is limitations when borrowing art or building off of it seen especially in youtube and the greatest benefit is allowing owners to be properly credited for their hard work.
  • We also talked about how unfair it is when creator’s get their work misused or ‘stolen’. To avoid this, we use liscences (even on Github) to protect our work Make a license for your personal (blog) and Team repositories for the CPT project. Be sure to have a license for both Team GitHub repositories (frontend/backend). Document license(s) you picked and why. FYI, frontend, since it is built on GitHub pages may come with a license and restrictions. Document in blog how team made license choice and process of update.
  • As stated above, our group decided to use the MIT license since our website is meant to provide a framework for the public.

5.6 Notes

  • We began the discussion by talking about what happens when we google ourselves. Everybody mostly said that not much was on the internet about them because of our lack of presence on the internet and young age.
  • We discussed how certain information on the internet could be violating such as social security numbers, bank accounts, passwords, pictures.
  • We began to discuss the importance of internet safety and protecting sesitive information. We discussed things such as two factor authentification, encryption.
  • Lastly we discussed how we can prevent people, especially ones who do not use the internet as often from getting scammed or their private information stolen. The main vulnerable targets discussed were very old people and very young people, both not having much knowledge on internet safety. We talked about the importance of educating each other, using virus protectors, and not clicking on sketchy links.

    5.6 Hacks Reflection

    Describe PII you have seen on project in CompSci Principles.

  • Many of the project ask for names for a sign in. Additionally one of the projects asked for your grades which can be very personal to students. What are your feelings about PII and your personal exposure?
  • I feel that my data when given to websites should be protected. I would not like it if my photos were out without my permission unless its something that I have given permission to post, such as school affiliated clubs and organizations. Describe good and bad passwords? What is another step that is used to assist in authentication.
  • Good passwords are unique to the person and do not contain ‘easy to guess’ information like names and birth years. Another step used in authentication is two factor authentication, using your email or phone number which is good because it is less likely for someone to access your account that way. For example Slack uses two factor. I learned this the hard way because I used my school email to sign up and when it asked to email me I realized I couldn’t access an inbox thorugh my school email. (Still don’t know how to fix this) Try to describe Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption
  • Symmetric encryption uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt data. Assmmetric uses two different keys to encrypt and decrypt. Provide an example of encryption we used in AWS deployment.
  • AES-256 is the technology we use to encrypt data in AWS Describe a phishing scheme you have learned about the hard way. Describe some other phishing techniques.
  • My friend and I were researching for a research paper in English and one of the sites had some sketchy ads. My friend clicked on one by mistake and immediately it navigated to what seemed like a fake lottery site that asked for name, age and asked to provide card information to supposedly buy a lottery ticket.
  • Also I’ve heard so many free-movie sites causing viruses horror stories from people
  • Additionally many scam callers have tried to get my credit card number on the most random occassions. Personally think it’s so out of pocket.
  • So one phishing technique, which usually works really well on old people is scam calls that promise one thing in exchange for your data. Another one is ‘too good to be true’ advertisements that steal your data like the fake lottery ticket site.