Abstract
Technology companies have grown at an astronomical rate and have focused on maximizing profit margins and minimizing costs. My STS research demonstrates the essential safety steps Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies have skipped in order to push out new models at faster rates and drive in more business than their competitors. This has led to holes in the models that have and will continue to harm children, unless a change is made. My technical project consisted of mimicking Wi-Fi networks for a business with two buildings across the street from one another. We had to mimic the networks because Ting would not service the second building. While the exact reason was never disclosed, I can only assume that the network borders established by Ting are highly correlated with the projected income and competition of a location. Even if those locations are across the street from one another, so close that the signals from each building overlap significantly. Both of these projects highlight the inconveniences and harm these profit-chasing companies cause to consumers.
My STS research focuses on the harm Artificial Intelligence has caused to children in unsupervised environments. I aimed to answer the question: What effects does AI have on children in home environments, and how does this help/hinder their social and cognitive development? I analyzed a variety of short-term evidence showing that AI is both helpful and harmful to children, but only helpful under strict adult supervision. I used technological momentum to highlight the importance of bringing light to the issue while AI technology is still heavily impressionable. Because AI is so new, I analyzed the long-term effects of previous technological advancements on children, such as mobile phones and social media. My research yielded some compelling results that AI is harmful to children, including stunted cognitive and social development, unhealthy dependencies on technology, parasocial relationships/interactions between children and home assistants (ex. Amazon Alexa), and suicide. I found that without adult supervision, AI is dangerous to children and can cause irreversible damage.
My technical project involved providing a seamless internet connection for a company in Pantops, VA. The company was forced to use separate internet providers due to restrictions imposed by Ting (their original provider), which created a major inconvenience for employees, as they had to reconnect to the internet when moving between the two buildings. At my internship this past year, I worked closely with our network technician, including an on-site implementation where we had Ting and Comcast signals mimic one another. The question we had to answer in this project was how to mimic the networks without extra equipment, such as a VPN. The reason for this project was that the company grew and added a building across the street that Ting would not service, leaving them to choose Comcast. There are many benefits to having two providers, including reliability, scalability, and persistence in an outage. We were able to successfully establish the networks using specific LAN, WLAN, VLAN, and SSID values, as well as identical network names and passwords, ultimately eliminating the headache of reconnecting to the internet when traveling between the buildings. We found that this solution yielded the optimal outcome for the given problem, eliminating the need for employees to manually switch between networks.
Overall, the two projects I detailed provide important insights into the impacts that profit-prioritizing has on consumers. They focus on the impacts companies have had on consumers' daily life that, as previously discussed, have the potential to permanently alter an individual's life. Future researchers should focus on expanding research into the impacts of business decisions on an average person’s life, such as data privacy, planned obsolescence, and other large decisions that are made in favor of money over safety and privacy. Future research could also analyze how outing businesses' bad practices affects their profit margins and the consumption rates of their products.
I’d like to thank Professor Caitlin D. Wylie and Professor Sean Murray for guiding my STS portion of this portfolio. They helped me fine-tune my work and improve my writing tremendously. I’d also like to thank Chad Reimold for mentoring me through my technical project and providing continuous support throughout the writing of my technical report. Finally, I’d like to thank my supervisor, Chris Hewitt, for his support throughout my project and the writing of my final report.
