At a startup fair in Shenzhen, often called China’s Silicon Valley, a robotic arm salutes the Chinese flag while a camera scans the crowd for faces to greet by name. Six thousand miles away in Palo Alto, an engineer pitches an AI model that can generate lifelike images of anything, except, he jokes, “political context.” […]
Tag: technology
No ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card for Google in Its Latest Monopoly Lawsuit
If you’re like me, you probably barely notice the advertisements for skin care products, niche kitchen appliances, and the latest pumpkin-flavored treat that fill the margins of nearly every website you visit. While we’re all familiar with the omnipresent digital pop-up ads on everything from cooking blogs to news sites, many internet users don’t understand […]
ASEAN Navigates Techno-Geopolitics of AI in U.S.-China Showdown
As artificial intelligence (AI) cements itself as a cornerstone of global power, Southeast Asia finds itself at the center of a complex and high-stakes rivalry between the United States and China. Established in 1967 amid Cold War tensions, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was designed to foster regional stability and cooperation, helping its […]
The Case for Breaking Up Big Tech
The Big, the Bad, the Un-American… In 2020, New York Times writer Kashmir Hill set out to answer a salient question: how dependent are we on Big Tech? Working with a technologist, Hill designed a virtual private network that blocked all internet addresses controlled by tech’s five largest companies: Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Meta, […]
Connectivity In The Courtroom: Click for Justice!
What does the future of justice look like to you? While we all have grand hopes and expectations of what justice should be, justice can be as simple as accessibility to a courtroom. In California, accessing the justice system is evolving–now it is as simple as turning on your electronic device. Instigated by the pandemic, […]
The Unplugged Reality of Electric Vehicles and Clean Transportation
In 2016, the California Senate passed SB-32, requiring that state greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. In 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown issued EO-B-55-18, establishing the statewide goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. Today, nearly six years later, the state is not on track to meet either target. […]
Fervor Over a Liberal-Leaning Chatbot: How We Should Approach Political Bias in ChatGPT
ChatGPT, the infamous large language model that’s arguably blown up into as much of a “media sensation” as it has as a “technological innovation,” boasts no short list of controversies. From ChatGPT’s ability to trick human texters into replacing student-written essays, ChatGPT can be attributed to the general public’s heightened discussion over the perceived “dangers […]
Embracing AI: ChatGPT is a Teacher’s Friend, Not Foe
Artificial intelligence is powerful. We can use it to generate artistic images with a short prompt in DALL-E, or to negotiate our daily lives via smart assistants like Siri or Alexa. But as ever, the arrival of transformative technology raises doubt and fear: will it be made to do our bidding in ways that improve […]
Facial Recognition Software Reflects Systemic Inequality
I paid for lunch today with my face. Well, not really—but I didn’t need cash or a physical debit card, courtesy of Apple’s Tap-To-Pay technology. I didn’t even have to touch the screen; Apple’s incorporation of Facial Recognition Software provides users with unparalleled convenience, allowing us to unlock our phones and use countless features with […]
CA Isn’t Ready to Close Its Last Nuclear Power Plant— But It Can’t Stay Open
On the first of February, 79 top energy experts signed an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, urging him to halt the decommission of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, California’s very last operational source of nuclear power. The group behind this letter includes dozens of prominent energy executives, professors from Berkeley, MIT, Stanford and more, […]