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AI For Good: Entering An Exciting New Era

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Let’s face it: AI can be scary. Doomsday thoughts of The Terminator and end-of-humanity robot uprisings are often associated with progressions in AI technology for those without a solid understanding of how machine learning works, and algorithm biases and problematic responses might cause even the fiercest supporters of AI to hesitate. How do we put our faith in technology that has proven to backfire? What if we create something we can’t control? The good news is that the robot apocalypse isn’t coming. Not anytime soon, at least. In fact, while it’s easy to focus on the negative aspects of AI, it has allowed us as a society to surpass even our own expectations for technological development. There are countless ways AI benefits us in our everyday lives, from giving us directions to get to work to writing down our shopping lists as we speak them aloud. AI can recommend playlists for our morning routines and show us the funniest TikToks for us to send to our friends. And on top of the sm...
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Let’s Get Ethical: Biases in AI

If artificial intelligence is meant to mimic human behaviors and cognitive functions, will AI find itself plagued with the same biases that humans hold? What happens when a supposed non-partial AI behaves in a way that can be deemed harmful? Bias is defined as “an unreasoned and unfair distortion of judgment in favor of or against a person or thing.” ( Merriam-Webster ). Examples of biases that are highly prevalent in modern society are opinions towards different races and ethnicities, sexual orientations, gender orientations, income levels, disability status, and so on. People with biases may have strong, outward opinions towards certain groups, while others’ biases may be more unconscious. Ethics, on the other hand, is a “set of moral principles” ( Merriam-Webster ), generally communally agreed upon in our current society. Bias and ethics play a huge role in business. It is expected that businesses behave in a way that is accepted by our society’s ethical standards; no insider tradin...
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Chatbots: Uncanny Valley or Your New Best Friend?

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Have you ever experienced an overwhelming sense of discomfort when being faced with a photo or video of a robot or toy resembling a human, despite there being no obvious danger to you? Well, you’re not alone. This phenomenon — yes, it’s a studied phenomenon — is called Uncanny Valley, and refers to the correlation between the human-like appearance of an object and the significance of the emotional response endured by the viewer. Originally introduced by Tokyo Institute of Technology professor Masahiro Mori, Uncanny Valley states that favorable feelings towards robots increase as the robot’s human likeness increases, but with limits ( Caballar 2019 ). The “valley” refers to the drop in favorability after human likeness reaches a point after 50%, as illustrated in the following graph created by Mori. It is important to note that after the dip of the valley, the favorable feelings rise once more as the object approaches 100% human resemblance, “indicating a living person.” ( Kendall ). A ...
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AI at Alibaba: What We Know (And Don't)

A lot of what our society considers artificial intelligence is actually not, according to author Beth Daley of the Conversation. Artificial intelligence, or AI, must mimic human intelligence in ways surpassing simple automation. Therefore, technological inventions that utilize statistics, data reporting, and other common methods of analyzing user activity (Daley, 2022) are not necessarily AI. Author David Lyle of Pacific Data Integrators used an example to highlight AI being incorrectly attributed by looking at a self-service soda machine that reported to researchers which soda combinations were highly popular. But this isn't artificial intelligence — it's just simple data reporting. One modern company regularly utilizing AI in its business practices is Alibaba, an e-commerce platform headquartered in China. Aside from making large investments in AI research and software ( Faggella, 2022 ), Alibaba is outwardly using artificial intelligence solutions to drive sales. One examp...
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