Abstract
Modern-day technologies have demonstrated that they are capable of tearing society apart just as much as they can bring it together and strengthen it. Between the introduction and subsequent widespread usage of artificial intelligence, release and immense scrutiny of smart glasses, and sweeping popularity of other devices such as social media applications, emerging technologies have shown precisely how rampant they can be streamlined into day-to-day lives all across the world. As these existing tools continue to develop and evolve, new gadgets, such as Poptionary, a Firefox browser extension capable of projecting on-demand language-to-language translations and pronunciation guides, continue to be developed. With a goal of providing educational support for individuals looking to learn a new language or those seeking comprehension in texts outside of familiar languages, undertaking the creation of such an application for my capstone was a step towards bridging the gap between those from different backgrounds and breaking down language barriers—a purpose that hit home for me, an American-born Chinese individual that loves to appreciate culture from all around the world, even those that I may have difficulty communicating with. On the other hand, controversial technologies continue to expand, leaving behind risks such as privacy concerns, security hazards, and other critical vulnerabilities. As such, I elected to delve into the systems that are responsible for governing such emerging technologies as bringing light to the dimensions behind limiting new technologies’ damaging capabilities can shine the spotlight on vulnerabilities and strengths of existing processes, thus invigorating growth in such structures. More specifically, I investigated the plague of technological illiteracy amongst lawmakers and the effects of such a disease on regulations for emerging technologies. As a student in the field of computer science, striving for comprehension in both the processes behind developing applications as well as the entities that regulate new devices provides me with an increasingly well-rounded understanding of both the science and the politics behind the seemingly highly technical field. With more perspective and outlook on the industry’s operations, life cycles, and interactions with American policymakers, I can readily take more educated and ethical stances on subjects that others may opt to ignore or avoid due to lack of information or understanding.
Poptionary provides immense utility as both a learning tool and a convenient approach to reading foreign texts. It is all-too-easy to opt out of sharing culture and traditions due to a language barrier. Without readily-available avenues of communication, even simple texts outside of one’s legible scope can drive an individual away from an eye-opening experience (or ability to find the restroom). With Poptionary, however, live translation on texts in foreign languages can be translated to familiar languages, assisting users in their ability to read, understand, write, and even speak in non-native tongues.
Enabling Poptionary allows users to hover over words and phrases on websites to receive instant pop-ups with translations and pronunciations, providing the ultimate convenient translation package. In addition to providing users with resources to better understand and speak terms from foreign languages, a ‘History’ and ‘Bookmarks’ tab resides in the browser extension’s menu, allowing users to return to previous terms by either bookmarking them or checking the most recent terms that were translated in the History tab. The application also supports several keyboard shortcuts that make certain options such as enabling/disabling the pop-up function and bookmarking a pop-up even more accessible. Despite being built to aid all kinds of users, the current application only supports Chinese to English translations. Various languages have different nuances that require greater attention and further developments to make them more accessible and comprehensible. An example of such a nuance for Chinese was to place accents that represent the appropriate tones of each word above the proper character; these details, in tandem with developing all of the application’s features from scratch, occupied the majority of the scope of the project’s limited timeline. Despite only supporting a single translation direction, Poptionary accomplishes its goal of providing a convenient option for translating text well.
The investigation of technological literacy amongst lawmakers and its impact on the establishment of well-rounded regulations capable of effectively mitigating risks within emerging technologies is the aim of my sociotechnological policy paper. A quantitative multifaceted approach with a focus on tacit knowledge and cultural lag is employed to conduct the analysis, evaluating how embodied experience, institutional culture, and generational knowledge gaps shape the creation of regulations. Primary points for scrutiny are legislative and regulatory analysis, discourse analysis of Congressional hearings, literature and expert benchmarking, and comparative case analysis. By diving into and exposing potential weaknesses in the policymaking system, actors that are closely involved can readily adapt their methods to accommodate for shortcomings that may influence policymaking negatively whilst maintaining good habits.
The inspection’s findings show that U.S. regulations in response to emerging technologies indicate the presence of limited technical comprehension. A prime example is the 2024 Robocall Incident where an AI-generated voice mimicking then-President Joe Biden discouraged voting within certain regions. The Federal Communications Commission responded by deeming the use of AI-generated voices to be illegal, furthering existing robocall regulations. Rather than targeting the core problem of artificial voice synthesis, the FCC’s response elects to address the topic of robocalls instead. Such tunnel vision fails to take into consideration that the migration of such technologies into other industries such as the financial and music sectors could cause catastrophic damages. A lack of tacit knowledge about such expansive systems revolving around artificial intelligence leads to policies that fail to account for the creative adversarial dynamics of technological systems, opening up opportunities for malicious actors to take advantage of opportunities that should previously have been shut down. Cases like these illustrate patterns of reactive and narrowly targeted tendencies within legislation that fails to halt threats where subject matter experts and hands-on contributors such as engineers and data scientists would have with their mature familiarity with advanced processes and their vulnerabilities/exploitative natures.
