Fatima's Midterm Essays

1. Hello! I'm still here!
During this time and age, we can no longer see ourselves without using our smart phones and other sorts of technology in our every day life. Portable devices such as cell phones have drastically changed our way of living. Even though, cell phones have made our lives easier with their capability of apps, we cannot ignore the downside of these new technology. We have become a society that have become dependent on our devices. Someone being on their phone or tablet while eating or walking has become as some sort of accepted norm. We are completely consumed by our little screens that we forget to notice the world around us. This phenomena is called by Langdon Winner as technological somnambulism. I completely agree with his opinion. Society is so focused on their phones that we are immune to any other outside stimuli. People, noises, lights, etc become blurred and ignored when we are glued to our tablets and phones. People trip, run into trees or poles, and even miss important human interactions so they can contribute to the mass data feeding systems we call social media. Such as during a date. Your partner can be consumed in documenting the date that he or she can ignore or overlook you because they have to post their food on Instagram or twitter. I can personally testify that I am guilty of this dependence on my phone. I often use it to avoid public interaction when I'm either at the store or just walking to class so when my phone stopped working today, I became anxious and desperate to quickly replace it. However, I cannot do anything until Monday. I am not without my vital tool for social avoidance throughout public and family life. Specially for the family gathering I have to attend tomorrow. I cannot longer rely on my technological somnambulism to save me from having to chat with my aunts and uncles. The idea of not having my phone for about two days made me feel like I had just been disconnected to everyone since I can not text, snapchat, tweet, or Facebook message them. The social media Fatima will be nonexistent for this time so I wonder how many people will wonder where I am. Do I really cease to exist or matter if I'm not posting, liking, or messaging them? Did I really go somewhere if I didn't document it on my social media profiles? Documenting your life has become the major component of the technological somnambulism that we no longer find it rude if someone is on their phone while talking or hanging out with friends. The funniest and most recent example that I can think of that truly explains technological somnambulism is the viral video of the sorority girls taking selfies during the baseball game. Not one of them was paying attention to the game or each other farther than agreeing to take a selfie. Have we truly become a society that in order to express and communicate ourselves to other has to be thru the internet? What happened to getting to know another person by meaningful conversations? Are we becoming more consumed by technology? When will we reach the limit of technology interfering with our lives?

5. The real fountain of youth has been found
Aging is difficult for everyone to accept but it seems to affect women the worst. But what if I told you that you could live forever? That's something that I thought about when I saw the short film, Be Right Back with the whole idea of living on as my "better self". Robot Ash was very interesting when you think about artificial intelligence. No, I would not consider him a full artificial intelligence agent because he still acted more like Martha's servant than an actual companion. I can see why Martha decided to try the robot Ash prototype but as time progress she became annoyed with him until she locked him in the attic. In my opinion Robot Ash differs from Ava (Ex Machina) for he does not possess free will. He is like a walking version of Apple's agent, Siri. Robot Ash did nothing more than what Martha asked him to do. He had no more personality than being helpful and cheerful. Social media Ash that made up the aura or soul of Robot Ash left little room for developing. Robot Ash was a little puppy like creature that Martha slowly began to shape into her idea or perception of the human Ash. On the other hand with Ava, I would consider her an artificial intelligence agent. Even the tittle of the movie, Ex Machina, seems fitting. Ex- former, Machina - machine. Ava to me IS a former machine. She was able to develop and maneuver the best and worst parts of humanity. Ava cared for art, nature, infrastructure of buildings she had never seen but also managed to develop our traits of deceit, manipulation, killing, and lying. The fact that she manipulated and tricked one human and killed the other demonstrates that she has fully developed consciousness and free will; human characteristics that can not be coded into a simple robot. With the constant improvements and development of smarter, more capable robots, we are left with the question of morality and our moral responsibility for them. Are we morally responsible for a robot? I think it depends. We do have some responsibility to take care and provide maintenance for our technological properties but in the case of Robot Ash and Ava, I feel more morally responsible for Ava than Robot Ash. Robot Ash seems to me like a puppy that you can communicate with so I would take care of an artificial intelligence but with Ava the responsibility increases. Since Ava is more technological developed than Robot Ash she is like a small child. She has the ability to develop, make choices, and form ideas so we have a moral responsibility for her well-being. Even if they're not organic but developed or man made creations, we should still be held accountable for their actions and physical condition for they're our creations and they will have our human imperfections. Just like you take care of your phone, tablet, or even your toaster, we should treat our artificial intelligence agents with even more care for they can respond back so we would have no excuse to avoid responsibility for our creations.

6. Total robot takeover. Part 1
The Turing Test has been performed since 1950 and since that day, we have strived to create a program that can beat the test. The Turing Test consists of a panel of humans determining if the person they are chatting with is a real human or a computer program that was made to give human-like responses. I strongly believe that if a computer ever wins the "imitation game" they should be considered intelligent because they have developed a way to some how think and analyze the situation presented to them and decide what would a good response be in order to get a desired outcome. Computer programs, right now, cannot do this. They are simply programed to state a specific answer when a specific question is asked. They cannot develop this train of thought that humans posses thus we cannot consider them intelligent. With a train of thought, we can further develop into free-will and form our opinions and that is the key for computer programs to be consider intelligent. The Turing Test however is not without flaw. The Turing Test assumes that humans already have a certain expectation of what a computer would and can respond like and what a human would and can respond like. For example, as a human we can already assume that a computer program knows only facts, will respond with correct statements, and cannot understand and process any sort of emotion. While a human will try be able to understand and even give advice or an option when presented with a complex, emotional issue. But is emotion the only thing that separates us from machines? Besides the hormonal waste product that we call emotions, how else can we determine intelligence in robots and computer programs when they have a faster access to an infinite amount of data?  I think that when computers begin to rationalize and become opinionated on their own is when we can consider them intelligent. The moment they become able to process and analyze the data and come up with results on their own is the day that they will be intelligent enough for a robot take over. One example of this development is Wall-E and Eve from the Disney movie. They were both developed and intelligent enough to process and decide that the plant in the shoe was important enough to protect even though their superiors wanted to dispose of it. Eve and Wall-E displayed leadership, determination, and revelry that were not programed for in order to fight and save what they believed for. They slowly developed these traits. And let's not mention the fact that they were able to demonstrate a form of love that other robots in the movie did not. Having these human attributes shows their intelligence.