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[djyamz]

Blog post 5

Proposition: Generative AI - Existential Threat?

Generative AI, such as, ChatGPT and DALL-E are becoming more well known and used by most people I know, especially amongst students. There are many beneficial and productive ways that machine learning has affected the world, as said in this article by McKinsey & Company: "In the years since its wide deployment, machine learning has demonstrated impact in a number of industries, accomplishing things like medical imaging analysis and high-resolution weather forecasts". And I personally struggle to see the more negative aspects of Genrative AI since I've used it in ways that were positive. For example as a set decorator in film I used it to create copyright free posters as opposed to having to hire a graphic design artist who I didn't have the budget to pay. However, if I had the money I would hire such a person because the images that were generated for me were not that good but using AI did save me from having a way bigger workload. And it may seem controversial to say, but I don't think Generative AI has the ability to take my job or effect my job security in the future as an artist. Art, I argue, is the most human instinct. To me art is not an image, it's not a thing you can just learn how to do, it is learning how to explain life. Something that people will never be able to do which is why we continue to try. A machine could give you an image of a sunflower, but do you remember Vincent Van Gogh or the sunflower more?

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-generative-ai

[djyamz]

Blog Post 4

Proposition:  Bitcoin is not a viable currency because it requires an unsustainable amount of energy to process each transaction.

In an article titled "The Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Mining Explained" by Mary K. Pratt, she explains the environmental impact of bitcoin which expands on the proposition that bitcoin uses an unsustainable amount of energy. She states, "Bitcoin's global electricity consumption of 173.42 TWh from 2020 to 2021 exceeds that of some countries" and that the "amount of power exceeds the combined electricity consumption of Argentina and the Philippines". This results in increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. She continues by saying "bitcoin mining processes produced 85.89 MTCO2E, or metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, from 2020 to 2021, according to the study. This figure is comparable to 9,665 gallons of gasoline consumed by passenger vehicles, or 96,210 pounds of coal burned in one year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator". This proves that bitcoin is definitely not a viable currency, in the US some states/government officials are banning bitcoin mining because of its environmental impact while some aren't. The article states, "experts [say] some efforts to make bitcoin more sustainable could happen, such as getting a higher percentage of its electricity from renewable sources and recycling its heat -- both of which are happening in some places" but even with potential solutions to this problem emerging it would take all bitcoin miners to switch to more sustainable practices for the environmental impact to decrease, which may never occur.

Source: https://www.techtarget.com/sustainability/feature/The-environmental-impact-of-bitcoin-mining-explained#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20that%20amount%20of,2021%2C%20according%20to%20the%20study.

[djyamz]

Blog Post 3

Proposition: Humans are the weakest link in any cyber-security system

Humans, by nature, are prone to errors, and cybercriminals exploit these vulnerabilities through tactics like social engineering. One prominent form of social engineering is phishing, where attackers masquerade as trustworthy entities to trick individuals into revealing confidential information. The website terranovasecurity.com provides numerous examples of social engineering attacks, illustrating how cybercriminals exploit human traits for nefarious purposes. Some examples include:

Email Spoofing: involves forging the sender's address to appear legitimate, often mimicking a known entity

Baiting: involves enticing individuals with the promise of something desirable. On the website it talks about an incident where USB drives labeled "Company Payroll" were strategically placed in a corporate parking lot. Curiosity led employees to pick up and plug in these devices, unknowingly infecting their systems with malware. The human desire for freebies or valuable information made them susceptible to this attack.

Pretexting: involves creating a fabricated scenario to obtain sensitive information. In another scenario it said an attacker posed as an external consultant, contacting employees and claiming to need specific data for a supposed audit. The employees, trusting the consultant's credibility, provided the requested information, unaware of the malicious intent behind the inquiry.

There are even more methods and examples, but even with the ones I've mentioned it is undeniable that humans are and might always be susceptible to being hacked especially when social engineering is involved.

Source: https://terranovasecurity.com/blog/examples-of-social-engineering-attacks/

[djyamz]

Blog Post 2

Proposition:  The debate between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists is over -- Facebook is a doomsday machine.  Social media platforms created the conditions and provided the means to organize the only breach of the US Capitol building in modern history.

This article made me think about an essay written by Jia Tolentino called “The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams” where she talks about Trump winning the election, and I find what she has to say relevant to this discussion if we look at the internet’s impact on society and culture. She says, “as wealth continues to flow upward, as Americans are increasingly shut out of their own democracy, as political action is constrained into online spectacle, I have felt so many times that the choice of this era is to be destroyed or to morally compromise ourselves in order to be functional–to be wrecked, or be functional for reasons that contribute to the wreck” (193). In the article from The Atlantic it talks about how facebook was created with the promise of bringing community but I think what people are increasingly beginning to see is how in reality the internet promotes hyper individualism which I suppose should have been evident from the start; posting on social media is about posting yourself, constantly reaffirming an identity, one that is susceptible to becoming an exaggeration or ingenuine. Later, Tolentino says that Trump “was elected for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets. It’s not the actual possibility of victory that you pay for; it’s the fleeting vision of victory” and that “the pipe dream is becoming the dominant structure of aspiration…in becoming party to a scam, we access some of the hideous glory of scamming: we get to see, if not actually experience, what it might be like to loot the place and emerge unscathed” (194). I feel this can be applied to the breach of the Capitol building, in fact this essay was published before it happened and so that proves she was right, but really what it describes is how and why people were pushed in such a direction. One can argue that it is about the danger of online communities and facebook but I think what I see instead is how it starts with people seeing the amount that successful people like Trump and Zuckerberg can get away with and that creates a world where everyone else has to do the same. 

[djyamz]

hi :)