It seems like nowadays any time my field pops up in the news, it is some new challenge or controversy. It makes sense: the Internet is a relatively new technology yet it plays a role in everyone’s daily life. Around the world, access to computers is growing, and the technology is changing at an alarming rate. At this pace, it is hard to keep track of when rights are being infringed upon or if people are gaining too much power. In fact, there are so many controversies in computer science that I had trouble narrowing it down to just three (rather broad) topics: privacy, artificial intelligence, and piracy.
PRIVACY Concerns about privacy have been everywhere lately, and that is because the issue is very complex. First of all, people are concerned about the lengths the U.S. government has gone to keep Americans safe. This has included large amounts of data collection on cell phone and Internet communications – like the NSA collecting more than 200 million text messages a day and putting tracking software on more than 100,000 computers around the world. Before this constant stream of new, crazy information began to be leaked by Eric Snowden, many Americans were in the dark about the truly amazing technology the government was using. The President has made it clear after the huge public outcry that the NSA will reform its methods of data collection, but maybe the government will just get better at hiding it? We may never know.
This is all without even discussing the privacy issues sitting in the palms of our hands. Our computers and phones, along with the websites we go on every day (see: Google, Facebook), are constantly collecting information on what we see and do. Unless your last name is Obama or Gates, no one really cares what you, individually, are doing online, but all of that information collected in mass is very valuable to advertisers and large companies – all they want is to target their ads to you in creative, but sometimes creepy ways.
AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not posing too much of a problem right now, but it definitely concerns scientists with its potential. After all, we are trying to get computers to become intelligent, near thinking entities. What if computers became so intelligent that they are able to exhibit emotions and feelings – would we no longer be able to justify their constant servitude to the human race? But even that is getting way ahead of problems that we are going to face much sooner. We have all heard about the devastation unmanned aerial vehicles can bring but what if instead of a person “behind the wheel” of a drone, it was strictly a computer making these decisions? There are also concerns about artificially intelligent computers taking away the jobs of humans. Oh, and of course, we need to keep their egos in check lest they decide to take over the world.
PIRACY Yes! Finally an issue that harms big business, not the common man! Well… sort of. See, piracy, otherwise known as copyright infringement, has been around as long as there have been copyrights to infringe upon – it’s even hinted at in the Constitution. But we’ve come a long way from an author wanting to be the only person with the rights to print their books. People share copyrighted photos on message boards. Kids download leaked video games. Teenagers take songs from iTunes and use them in their monetized YouTube videos. Even the most honest of people will still stream and download movies and TV shows from strange websites. But every time someone uses a piece of entertainment for free, media companies see a bigger hole growing in their pockets.
We cannot really blame these companies for trying to fight back. After all, each piece of content has many, many hard-working individuals behind it who deserve a paycheck. The real question is, how far can these companies go to protect their rights? There have been many different attempts to stop piracy but none have really stuck. The U.S. Government shut down Megaupload, a file-hosting site,and the Pirate Bay has consistently had its various domains suspended. Perhaps the most notorious attempt to stop internet piracy, SOPA, was met with huge amounts of backlash in 2012 – major websites spoke out or even blacked out against SOPA to bring attention to the bill. In trying to fight infringement, people claimed that SOPA would actually allow censorship because it had the right to blacklist websites (hence the black outs). Needless to say, the bill was never passed, but the issue still remains, now with a rift between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The government and big corporations are still seeking a solution.
After all that, it seems like computers have become more trouble than they’re worth. Hopefully the next few generations, those that have grown up surrounded by technology, will be able to use their comprehensive understanding of how powerful and important computers are to address these problems. But it’s clear it will never be a day with out challenge and controversy in the field of computer science.
You might like Brian Christian’s book, “The Most Human Human What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive.” I used it in one of my classes last semester. See this review at the NY Times–http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/books/review/book-review-the-most-human-human-by-brian-christian.html.