Reading response assignments

Assignment for Week 3: I think that fake news obviously existed before the internet, in the form of conspiracy theories, false advertising, or possibly even town gossip, if that would qualify. This fake news was able to spread through word of mouth and through mediums such as print newspapers. However, the internet allows this news to be spread at a wider scale; it allows people to form echo chambers that amplify this fake news; and the use of data makes it easier to target individuals to see certain media that could be false. For example, before digital networks, members of political campaigns could canvas door to door to gather information about likely voters and then send targeted leaflets in the mail. However, today this data can be accumulated online based on the content that people interact with, the accounts or groups that people follow, the products that people purchase, etc., which makes it easier and less time consuming to build up profiles and models. This means that it is easier to target certain people to spread fake news that they are likely to believe and even reshare. Examples could be seen in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in the US, where bots from other countries were able to amplify fake news that had the potential to impact the rhetoric surrounding people’s votes.

Assignment for Week 4: Platform economies connect providers of a certain good or service to customers who want to purchase said good or service. For example, Uber connects drivers to people who need transportation, just as Amazon connects sellers of a certain product to buyers of that product (or, in their own terms, the Requesters and the Providers). In this way, both the “buyers” and the “sellers” of whatever good or service is being provided have to interact with the platform as a sort of intermediary (which is how Uber classifies itself), and this platform has the power to mediate the terms and conditions of the exchange - for example, the prices that the “buyers” pay and the incomes that the “sellers” receive. The platforms also have a lot of power to track the activity of those engaging with the platforms. In my opinion, platforms have a moral responsibility to both their “buyers” and their “sellers” to provide a responsible environment. It is easy for platforms such as Amazon to claim that they are simply the middleman, but we would not accept that justification in other criminal or civil proceedings. A few years ago, in a town near me, a bunch of teenagers threw a party with underage drinking and drug use at the house of one of their relatives, and the relative was held legally liable even though they were not present because the transgressions occurred on their property. The same reasoning could be applied to economic platforms. Furthermore, such platforms have so much market power that people will still engage in their services even if they are exploitative, and they take advantage of that, which I also think is immoral and needs further regulation.

Assignment for Week 6: Software is extremely fast in facilitating economic activities, and some would say it is more efficient than traditional economic activities in terms of digital transactions. However, software also relies on its own unique framework and boundaries that may be more rigid than other economic systems, and also tends to be less understood by the general populace. Software both affects and is affected by its environment. As explained in the reading, it has the ability to compress and then redistribute actions into different environments, and a significant amount of our modern technology is dependent on software. It also is “saturated with, and indivisible from social phenomena” – in other words, software does not exist in a bubble, it is created by humans who are influenced by their experiences and the world around them. That choice can be as simple as which coding language to use or as integral as how secure the code may be. Therefore, it would follow that there is an exchange between the environment and the software.

Assignment for Week 7: I think that there are many dangers to relying on AI. First of all, AIs are not always impartial predictors of the future, as we have seen in examples from the United States. One such example is in crime prediction statistics, when Black communities are overpoliced, leading to more statistics being collected on crimes in Black communities simply because more police are there, and because police might be more likely to pull over or cite a Black person for doing something that they might otherwise have let slide. As a result, the AI gets the impression that there is more crime in Black communities and continues this cycle of over-policing, which can feed into unfair evaluations of risk. Another issue with AI reliance is that it does not leave room for human consideration of outside or mitigating factors, and it does not have the ability to make judgments based on a person’s demeanor, if they seem trustworthy, and other features of human instinct. However, as we’ve discussed in one of our law classes this year, AI can be very helpful in systems where courts are overburdened with cases by speeding up certain processes and preventing backlog by clearing out more straightforward cases, or to provide a starting point for judges to work off of.