AI is one of the most interesting topics to be discussed in the world of tech. Companies are finding a multitude of ways to implement it into their businesses and thus our own daily lives. But Dr. Luis Perez-Breva thinks that we might have it all wrong.

He explains a situation he found himself in at a local Target store, in which you had to navigate your way around the store via a phone app instead of stopping and asking the workers as one normally would. Target was trying to implement AI machine learning into their store, but Dr. Perez-Breva thinks that areas like this don’t necessarily need it. AI shouldn’t have to wipe out all of humanity we have, especially in stores such as Target – he describes how an interaction with a worker is what keeps us human, going on throughout our days being unlike a robot.

He notices this change comes from physical stores seeing the success of online stores – it is important to really analyze the realm and environment of which you are implementing the AI. Otherwise, the masses against AI will continue to grow, as they will be continued to be implemented incorrectly and appear as more disruptive than helpful.

Julia Riccio – jmr17e

If you’re going to have a smart house, then you should also have smart security. With the recent leaps made in technology, security and protection in the home has now become easier to control and understand. Buying products to help solidify your home’s safety will always be an investment that is worth making.
https://www.travelers.com/resources/home/smart-home/5-smart-home-automation-safety-tips

Criminals are finding new ways to acquire your personal information through the internet. Are companies putting you at risk by having all their products smart devices? Can the nation handle all of this new data surging through the air?https://www.smartdatacollective.com/potential-hurdles-limiting-internet-things/

Elon Musk Founder of Tesla recently tweeted that “All orgs developing advanced AI should be regulated, including Tesla.” His quote was met with heavy criticism from startups because the barrier of entry would prevent many new companies from getting up off the ground.  Many of the critics also saw his move as a way of helping to limit new competition to enter the market. However, Elon claims his motives are purely to prevent a disaster before it occurs. To learn more about the arguments given by both sides read the article.

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After surveying over 10,000 British teens, it was revealed that Instagram is the worst social media site for cyberbullying. The organization that surveyed the teens, Ditch the Label, stated that, “Our theme this year was to explore the impact of technology and digital abuse upon the lives of young people.” 71% of the participants stated that the social media websites do not do enough to discourage and prevent cyberbullying.

After more digging, it was revealed that men are double as likely to do something abusive to someone online than women. The surveyors also revealed that the most common cyberbullying activities include sending screenshots of someone to others so that they can laugh at them in a group chat, interacting with a post that is intended to hurt someone else, or sending harmful and hateful comments to someone.

Professor Ian Rivers said it best, “We need to better understand the ways in which online and offline lives co-exist today and encourage young people to manage their online interactions safely.”

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To learn more and find our what each social media site was ranked, go to:

https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/instagram-worst-social-network-cyber-bullying-study-article-1.3339477

As facebook grows, so are their privacy concerns. Many facebook user have had reported facebook violating their privacy. As far back as 2006 facebook as been accused of violating people privacy. As you read the article, you can see that facebook was making money of their user personal information. Read more here..https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/timeline-facebook-s-privacy-issues-its-responses-n859651

Often times then none social media is a place for consumers to be unapologetically them on their chosen platforms. Like most things in life there is a good and a bad side to things, this goes for social media as well. This article speaks largely of how social media is largely uncensored of public opinions including acts of violence, hatred, and bigotry. Some examples include: Twitter, David Duke , former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, “sometimes tweets more than 30 times a day to nearly 50,000 followers, recently calling for the chasing down of specific African Americans “(Gardner 2018).

It has come to question of should there be some kind of censorship on social media platforms? Although there are settings in these platforms that allow you block people and flag accounts for using derogatory or racist behavior over the internet, how would these people be monitored? I’ve personally come to the conclusion after reading the article that there is no way to completely filter out hate throughout all social media because everyone is subject to their own thoughts and opinions but, there should be more stricter regulations to what people choose to post when it comes to discriminatory behavior.

https://publicintegrity.ohttps://publicintegrity.org/politics/social-media-where-voices-of-hate-find-a-place-to-preach/

In today’s world, technology is advancing so rapidly. However, it is rarely to benefit people with disabilities. With a lack of representation within his own disability, Kursat Ceylan decided to create something that would help everyone. This SMART cane, also known as WeWALK, uses sensors, voice recognition and Google maps to help the visually impaired navigate their way around the world without having to have someone by their side. Read more about this awesome invention here: https://mypositiveoutlooks.com/smart-cane-that-has-google-maps-bluetooth/?fbclid=IwAR3NFdv60Vp-QBgkP6nb1p0chO1i980zLYiqOu5G2iaPr9xWJgWCd_xOr48

Back when computers were a hot new thing for families and we all shared one in the house and we wrote commands to make them do something, we didn’t worry about if our medical devices would be secure from the terrible people on the internet.

Bugs in medical devices is becoming something to worry about today. Mainly, it’s security bugs in embedded devices. Companies being acquired by others and not updating their hardware is an issue. Critical bugs are being found and who is left to correct these deficiencies?

Most embedded devices depend on free software or open source software as their backbones. Many of these “companies” software tools are only maintained by a couple people, some are only one person who has developed the product in their freetime. This makes updating difficult.

Many electronic parts come with preinstalled reference designed software. They include code needed to install an OS on the board. Usually the board package is not updatable, similar to how cheaper Android phones will never get an update from Google, because the software embedded on the hardware is not updatable. The work needed to update a product that sold very few items would not be worth the development time for the company.

Large companies have the ability to create updated software since they have the teams, money, and contacts to do so. They also sell a lot more of the products they sell. Getting new software to run on hardware designed on old OS’s and old hardware can be a difficult task.

Consumer grade applications may not think that this is a huge problem due to how items like cell phones are tossed away every year or two. Medical devices though are expected to be long term use items. People write them into the budget years at a time.

Having medical device creators provide long term support will come at a cost. That cost will have to be taken up by users and businesses. Doing this will cause device users to turn to third party tech support to manage those devices instead. This in-turn does not give device manufactures a reason to do anything about the situation.

Manufactures don’t always have the ability to upgrade their components either. Licenses are usually for one function only and only for certain versions of kernels. The Linux community is great at maintaining the kernel, but patching a kernel takes much more work. The major OS companies have many more resources to be able to keep older systems up to date.

Legislation has been proposed to force some software maintenance by companies. It would force manufactures to maintain support of their products. But, this comes with it’s own issues.

Understanding how development of products works is important. Development of the devices would have to change to match the level of major manufactures. Manufactures will have to create update teams and expect that companies will use their products longer. The entire chain of building changes.

The problem is supply and demand as opposed to technology. We as consumers of medical IoT devices need to let manufactures know that we want support and that we are willing to pay for it. This will have to be addressed through contracts. We have to let them know upfront that we expect a certain level of service. We need to let them know what devices we are going to expect to use. Support costs money and we are going to have to commit to that financial burden for the long-term.

We are not going to get the level of security we get with companies like Microsoft or Apple. We will need to understand these smaller companies have much smaller budgets, selling much smaller amounts of devices. We will need to be understanding of their positions and give them the time to develop what we need.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/medical-device-vulnerability-highlights-problem-of-third-party-code-in-iot-devices/