Abstract
In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, the ways in which people create, analyze, and interpret data are reshaping industries, digital communication, and daily life. As technology becomes more embedded in professional and social contexts, its benefits and risks become inherently important to analyze. My two projects explore this dual nature of technology: how it empowers more efficient decision-making while simultaneously introducing complex social and ethical challenges.
My technical project addresses the need of the Automated Clearing House (ACH) business line of the Federal Reserve for a high-level view of performance metrics for its critical servers to quickly identify areas causing operational issues. To address this need, I developed an automated reporting process using Python to collect and integrate performance data into a scorecard report. The solution drew on APIs from monitoring tools such as Dynatrace and parsed raw server data files to extract key metrics. I utilized the Pandas library to clean, process, and reformat the data for use in the report. As a result, the scorecard improved team efficiency by reducing the time and effort required to identify performance concerns. Future work includes automating report delivery and expanding the solution to additional teams and business lines within the organization.
My STS research paper investigates the social, political, and ethical implications of deepfakes, synthetic media generated through artificial intelligence that are rapidly transforming how people interpret and trust digital information. As deepfake technology becomes more sophisticated and widely accessible, it poses significant social, political, and ethical challenges. The paper examines these implications through the framework of technological determinism, analyzing real-world case studies of deepfake use in political, entertainment, and social media contexts. The research examines public, media, and governmental reactions to notable deepfake incidents to illustrate how this technology shapes public trust, media authenticity, and regulatory discourse.
