Author Archives: yujuncho7

Section 102 Group 1: Review for Group 2

Posted on by
Reply

For more information on the proposal, their proposal can be found here

Overall the presentation went well. All the members did a great job on explaining their proposal. Their idea is a good step in solidifying the concreteness of the DIY Biology ethics blogs, which will help set concrete ethical guidelines for DIY Biologists. There is more that can be done to achieve the goal. On top of emailing the administrators of the blogs, creating a blog post about the suggested format for posting in the blog would raise more awareness for the blogs’ users about the problem of not have more concrete guidelines. Furthermore, it would be very beneficial to gain support from well-respected people in the Biology community who could also help set these ethical standards. Therefore emailing such people is another smart action to take.

Another potential step to take is contacting the DIY Biology websites that give the procedures for experiments. Raise more awareness about the ethics when approaching an experiment by suggesting to the administrators of these websites to set up links to ethics blogs. Especially for newcomers, the excitement of starting a DIY Biology experiment might overshadow the importance of the ethical guidelines to follow.

Project Proposal

Posted on by
3

Written Ethics Proposal

Emily Chen, Maruchi Kim, Quinn Z. Shen, Yujun Cho

 

For our E125 project, we will be completing our respective mobile applications for the CITRIS Mobile App Challenge. The mobile app challenge is centered around creating applications for today’s most pressing societal needs such as power consumption, water scarcity, and disaster relief. As such, our respective projects perfectly fulfills the civic engagement criteria for the E125 group project. The rest of the proposal will detail two separate mobile app challenge projects: Project Two Cents by Quinn Z. Shen, Maruchi Kim, and Emily Chen, and Project Mind Your Pills by Yujun Cho.

 

Project Two Cents

Our goal is to create a mobile app which allow users to donate two cents to natural disaster relief or world causes such as poverty, hunger, and water. Sharing the app would be made easy and personal to encourage users to join the cause. Our ultimate vision is to spread philanthropy through everyone’s pocket change.

 

To achieve our mission, we set out by creating a design outline to plan out what our minimal viable product would be in terms of releasing our mobile application. The basic is this: any user with a smart phone could easily and safely donate two cents to any philanthropic cause that he or she finds necessary to provide funding. However one single user on our app will not make much impact on the grand scheme of things. To combat this, we have made sharing very simple and easy, and with a large network of users, daily two cent donations can add up to make a much more meaningful difference. To build up on this point, if one in three Americans were to donate two cents a day to a single cause, two million dollars would be raised and donated to world causes.

 

Project Mind Your Pills

The main objective of this mobile app is to provide a medicine reminder system which also easily gives information at the tip of the finger. This application would allow people to be automous, which would ultimately save resources in the medical community.

 

To accomplish this task, the design is focused on getting feedback from people that rely on medicine daily. The project is currently working with the east bay Alzheimer community to get a strong direction in a simple design. The main features involve a simplified reminding system for all medications a person needs to take along with access to all necessary information for each medication, such as potential steps to take in the incident the user misses a dose. To gain a large user base, the primary focus is to initially target specific communities such as the Alzheimer community and eventually release the project to anyone that has access to a smartphone. The project members envision this application will build more awareness on medication usage and answer frequently asked questions about any medications.

Time and Cost Management

As for time and cost management, both teams have spend 3 hours a week to attend weekly CITRIS workshops, in addition to 2 hours per week dedicated to the development and creation of our respective project.

Her Ethical Complications

Posted on by
1

2/3/14 Is It Possible to Degrade and Exploit Your At-Home Sexbot?

Her is a movie that follows the relationship of a human male and a female operating system with futuristic artificial intelligence. The rise of artificial intelligence brought many ethical questions such as the possibility of a judgement day brought by a machine led  coup d’état; however the thought of intimate relationships between machines and humans brings a new plate of ethical questions to the table. What rights does artificial intelligence have in a relationship with humans? How will society adapt to the rise of machines that have essentially transcended into humanity? “Is it Possible to Degrade and Exploit Your At-Home Sexbot” explores some of these social implications of this up and coming technology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is still considered a tool in today’s society. If the day comes where people’s significant others are machines, then society will need to adjust views on AI, but it does not appear that many people have considered this thought. Especially in industries related to sexual pleasure, entrepreneurs are only considering AI as a tool to help create the perfect sex partner. There are some who believe “robot prostitution is set to overtake human prostitution by the year 2050.” I understand people will still have sexual desires and there will need to be a method of satisfying these desires in an intimate relationships between human and machine, so this technology may help a machine have such features; however, is it moral to create sexbots especially once AI essentially replicates the human brain? As this technology advances, at what point should “robotic sentience and free will” be considered? Should there be laws to protect machines against abusive partners? Sexbots are becoming a more known topic in politics because of these very questions. AI such as the one seen in Her is no longer in the very distant future.

The question is no longer about if AI ever becomes on par with human intellect but rather when AI becomes on par with human intellect. Then to answer the questions brought up, it will be important for society to decide whether or not systems with AI should be considered human. Believing AI can replicate a consciousness and emotions seems unlikely now because it is difficult to imagine creating an algorithm which translates consciousness and emotions into machine language; however this conclusion certainly cannot be ignored. If AI is ever considered human then I do not see any difference from degrading and exploiting an at-home sexbot to degrading and exploiting a human. Furthermore robot prostitution could easily be considered just as unethical as human prostitution. Whose fault would this unethical issue fall to? Engineers? Businessmen? What kind of flexibility do the engineers need to keep in mind when designing the products? Should the engineer allow the AI to have defensive capabilities? It is definitely a possibility that engineers in the future would want a sexbot to have defensive capabilities if AI is deemed to be equal to humans. As an engineer, I would definitely consider the ethical implications of the creation of AI, and trust society will mature enough to utilize the technology morally. Even the entrepreneurs should start considering the possibility of machines transcending into humanity. Machines will continue to change and flexibility will be more important than before. There is no doubt that robots and AI will have huge impacts on ethics. Maybe one day I will also love an AI operating system, but struggle to transform my views on AI being more than just a tool.

Critical Reflection 2 (Pawley)

Posted on by
Reply

What is engineering? This is the question that Alice Pawley speculates in this article by analyzing narratives. The results showed common themes between the narratives: “engineering as applied science and math, engineering as problem-solving, and engineering as making things.” There were many mixed feelings about the topics such as the separation of engineering from science. Some of the narratives mentioned that engineering is about solving problems that matter. This is interesting to speculate on because what is considered important to solve is relative. There are plenty of cases where an Engineer will create an application only for the demand for it, but not necessarily for – what some may consider – the greater good. These objects consist of improving the speed of car, creating games, etc. These examples are created because there is a demand for entertainment, but what value do these items have for the survival and progression of human society? If all the engineers involved in these examples focused their time and efforts on solving problems in less fortunate countries, wouldn’t it overall be more beneficial for the entire human population as a whole? There are definitely some who would agree, but as always there will be those against this idea. Many could argue that entertainment is important for a human society to thrive, and furthermore the results of engineering in some entertainment product could be used in other fields. As for scientists, there are also many of those who work on discovering technologies that will benefit all of human society such as research on cancer. It is wrong to say the scientists don’t’ have a goal or product in mind. In both scientists and engineers there are those that do something useful and solve problems that matter and those that do not. Engineering then isn’t something more useful or applicable to science but rather it is more of a type of science that also requires economics. Engineering is built off of a foundation of science and mathematics. The most interesting parts of this article are the questions Pawley raises such as: “How students reproduce, modify, subvert or otherwise resist such narratives” and “what evidence do students need to see present in their classroom content and practice to believe alternative narratives about engineering’s professional interest in and capacity towards, for example, solving the grand challenges of our planet?” Then the main question is how will the answer to what is engineering change in the generations to come.