Expanding Cybersecurity: The Ever-Evolving Information War; Autonomous Vehicles: The Next Step in Transportation?

It is no secret that technology is growing at an astonishingly fast rate, and technological developments can have significant impact on areas of society that are seemingly unrelated to the field of technology. Such rapidly developing technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), have implications that are both profound and impossible to predict with confidence. Their potential applications are therefore matters of disagreement.
AI-guided systems can augment or displace humans, relieving them of tedious tasks, accelerating productivity, solving once intractable problems, correcting for human biases, and preventing errors. Yet such systems can also introduce or feed many major societal issues. Professor Michael Cheng-Tek Tai (2020) names diminishing human closeness, increased unemployment, greater wealth inequality, systems that grow beyond human control, and misuse to perpetuate discrimination as five of these potential dangers. Undue enthusiasm for AI may introduce new and unpredictable risks, but excessive caution may delay or prevent important and beneficial applications. This is the central debate behind my sociotechnical project, which considers how the improving AI technology that allows for autonomous vehicles can impact society in positive and negative ways.
In my technical project I explore how developments in one aspect of computer science can drastically change a quite different aspect. Through the lens of UVA’s cybersecurity course: Defense Against the Dark Arts, my technical project discusses how modern AI and quantum computing can shift the balance of power in the privacy way that is central to the field of cybersecurity.