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Reading 06: Government Surveillance

I do not believe that companies should have provide a back door for the government to gain access to and surveil information.  The government should require the right to access any information they want, especially if it is private information about people that they trusted websites to protect for them such as personal conversations.  Companies that hold private information should be expected to protect that information from the government.  This being said, I think that it should be up to the individual company to offer a backdoor to information.  The government does use the information they gain to protect the country, so it makes sense to allow them access to the information.  If you are worried about what you are saying being used against you, then do not use sites that allow the government access to your information.  This brings me to my next point: if a company does release information to the government, they should be required to explicitly and publicly state this so the users
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Reading 07: Online Advertising

Online advertising is very controversial, as certain people think that it is unethical to collect information about a user and target them with ads specified for them.  However, I am not one of these people.  I believe that online advertising is a great invention, and although it could be used to target you and persuade you into buying something, that is what advertising is in general, and online advertising is no different.  Advertising is meant to target certain audiences, and online advertising is just an efficient way of doing that.  In reference to the meme that if you are not paying for it you're not the customer; you're the product being sold, I think that this is true.  If you are not paying for a service, then your information is likely being sold to companies for the purpose of advertising.  That does not mean that it is a bad thing, though.  I think that using people's information for the purpose of targeted advertising is great for users and the companies adver
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Reading 9: Net Neutrality

Net neutrality required all internet service providers to provide equal access to all web content.  This means that the internet could not be censored, which is the most valid argument in favor of net neutrality.  Not being able to censor the internet content, means users could not be charged more money for services, but now ISPs can charge what they want for whatever services they want.  The argument for repealing net neutrality is that it prohibited ISPs from testing different business models, so it was not fair to the companies. I am in favor of net neutrality, I believe that everything on the internet should be treated the same, so my ISP should not charge me for wanting to use certain services on the internet.  I would implement it the same way it was implemented before being repealed, however enforcing it provides a different problem.  Enforcing net neutrality would require monitoring ISPs business plans and freedom of information for users, which is a huge task.  I do not bel
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Reading 10: Trolling

Trolling is basically the act of creating a problem for someone else with the purpose of personal gain, whether that be financial or entertainment.  This behavior manifests itself in people that enjoy seeing other people struggle or enjoy confrontation.  Cyberbullying is meant to just put someone down and hurt their feelings, not actually inhibit them in any way.  This is different than regular bullying because regular bullying poses harassment and physical threats.  I think that companies have a moral obligation to try to prevent serious trolls that could gain access to someone's information or crash their computer, but that is as much as I think a company could prevent trolls.  Also, it is great practice for a website to have an option to report a user for misconduct such as trolling or cyberbullying.   Gamergate seems like an unnecessary movement to me.  People on gaming platforms have the same freedom of speech as people in real life, so anything that could be said under t
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Reading11: AI

Artificial intelligence is such an interesting topic.  It can be used to solve so many different problems, and I do believe that AlphaGo and the other examples like Watson are viable proof of artificial intelligence.  However, these examples are not human like, they can do specific things very well.  This can be shown through the Chinese Room situation.  In this situation, say there is an AI that passes the Turing Test, but it only understands Chinese characters.  If you feed this computer Chinese characters then it will respond with a human-like answer, however, if I am fed the same characters and run the program the computer is running manually, I would seem like a person who speaks Chinese as well.  I, however, would not understand any of the responses as I do not speak Chinese, so the understanding part of intelligence would not be fulfilled.  The Chinese Room is a valid counter example to the Turing test, as it shows that a computer can simulate human-like responses, but it would
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Reading 12: Self Driving Cars

Self driving cars have been talk of the future for a while, but they are now incredibly close to becoming a common luxury.  There are many motivations for building self driving cars, including public safety and traffic.  I believe that once the world's majority of cars is self driving that the roads will be much safer.  I trust machine error over human error 100% of the time.  I know that the software in these cars is being tested vigorously, so I know that it will have many safety precautions.  Some people are skeptical of self driving cars, and I think that these people are not fully aware of the current state of self driving cars.  They are currently at level 2 autonomy, meaning that the cars will be able to drive on highways and open roads, but it wont back out of your driveway and weave in and out of traffic for you if you are in a rush.  People think that when we say "self driving" it means that you get in, put in your destination and sit there as the car takes you
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Reading 13: IP

Patents are a tricky subject.  I am currently a part of two different start ups and this is a topic that has caused a lot of questions in both cases.  Patents can be very general, so its difficult to see if our platform is infringing on any patents. Intellectual property includes patents for inventions, trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications, so there are a lot of different subjects that someone trying to get a patent has to look in to.  Its hard to say whether having patents is ethical or not, there could be a patent on technology that could save lives and if the owner of that patents does not want to use it for some reason such as financial gain then no one else can use that technology and lives wouldn't be saved.  On the other hand, if patents were not granted, a person who invents something does not have any actual rights to the invention and it could be replicated by anyone without any repercussions.  I think that the people granting patents should have to
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