About six months ago, a security breach was disclosed by Apple detailing a new kind of vulnerability that Apple devices were vulnerable to. The statement released by Apple states that the security breach was a “zero-click” vulnerability. This means that the vulnerability was discovered by the attackers before Apple was even made aware of it; therefore, no patch exists for zero-day vulnerabilities, which gives these types of breaches a high chance to succeed. Although the intention behind this hack was to gain access to a device owned by an unnamed Saudi activist, Apple said that the breach could be exploited by hackers if Apple users were to receive any malicious pdf files containing this virus. According to the head of security engineering and architecture at Apple, these kinds of attacks are “highly sophisticated …cost millions of dollars to develop…and are used to target specific individuals” (Krstić, 2021). The intention behind this statement was to reassure users that this security breach should not be a threat to a majority of their users. 

The attackers are from an Israeli spyware company called the “NSO group”. This group is primarily known for their “zero-click” spyware called “Pegasus”. Whereas typical cyber attacks require interaction between the user and the malicious content, Pegasus does not require any sort of interaction, thus making it almost impossible for individuals to know if they have been compromised or not. The initial entry point for no zero click/no click exploits for Pegasus is iMessage. Therefore, victims can be targeted with only their phone numbers or Apple IDs. In this scenario, the Saudi official was sent a text with the Pegasus Spyware which allowed the NSO group to gather any and all of the data they wished to acquire. 

Although the NSO group says that the company only provides intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the spyware, through “zero-click” Pegasus hacks, such as the one manufactured by the NSO group, people all around the world are at risk of having their data get exploited if the spyware were to end up in the wrong hands. Due to this data breach, the NSO group was able to target an individual and gain all of the aforementioned information. In order to protect individual information, Apple encouraged all of their users to make sure to install/update their devices as soon as possible in order to prevent any security breaches. Apple also rolled out a mass iOS update that included security patches to prevent the spyware from infecting any of their other users.

At some point in our life, we’ve all had to prove to a website that we weren’t robots. Usually, this involves pressing the “I’m not a robot” button and then occasionally proving it by choosing squares with fire hydrants, traffic lights, or cross walks. Although I can remember a time when these tests were very straightforward, recently I have felt that the tests have been getting more and more complicated with the objects that are required to be found being subtly covered by bushes, hidden behind weird camera angles, or crossed over just enough into another square to make you wonder if it is enough to count. While reading articles about the CAPTCHA software, I was happy to find out that I was not going crazy and that a gradual increase in difficulty to prove you are not a robot is something that has been intentionally implemented by programmers in recent years. 

In the early 2000s, CAPTCHAs (which is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), used to just consist of simple warped text images which were enough to stump robots, however, with AI rapidly becoming more intelligent, the tests have needed to match their increase in intelligence as well. The switch from text to images happened around 2014, when Google put one of its own machine learning algorithms against humans to see which group had a high success rate at solving warped text CAPTCHAs. Embarrassingly, the results of this experiment showed that the robots got the test right 99.8% of the time, while humans only got it right 33% of the time. Learning from these results, Google moved onto a new method called “NoCaptcha ReCaptcha” where they observe the user’s data and behavior and allow some to pass after clicking the “I’m not a robot” button and making others choose objects from pictures. However, as expected, the machines and robots have once again caught up to the level of intelligence that humans use to distinguish between objects in pictures. One computer science professor from the University of Illinois was even able to come up with an algorithm to solve image and audio CAPTCHAs using Google’s own reverse image searching and audio recognition programs. 

With recent tests showing how machines are basically as good as humans are in basic text, image and voice recognition tasks, the necessity to come up with alternative tests have been noted. However many alternative test possibilities are limited by human capabilities. Since CAPTCHA tests need to be somewhat easy for humans, hard for computers, and something that someone from both hemispheres of the world can solve, it does not leave developers with many options on alternative tests. Many CAPTCHA developing teams have started to think about getting rid of single test authentications and have started to favor continuous authentication. Through continuous authentication, the software would continuously monitor a user’s behavior including their browsing history and track mouse movements, since the average human cannot mimic their mouse movements more than once, whereas a bot definitely can. Although this form of testing makes the most sense for authentication, it opens a whole new set of problems relating to security and privacy, something often debated in relation to developing technology. Another interesting form of authentication that Amazon received a patent for in 2017 is called the “Turing Test via failure.” These tests are created to be impossibly hard on purpose, including logic puzzles and optical illusions. The only way to pass authentication is to get the “correct” wrong answer, a wrong answer that only the human brain can come to.  I think this is such an interesting concept, since it goes against the structure of every CAPTCHA test in existence today. 

 

     Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly evolving field with many practical uses and implementations seen in today’s world. The general goal of AI is to mimic cognitive functions displayed by natural intelligence by artificially learning how to perceive its environment and achieve planned goals. AI can currently be seen implemented in automated decision making (video games), understanding human speech (Siri and Alexa), self-driving cars (Tesla), and advanced web search engines (Google) that recognize patterns to improve their recommendation settings for a specific user. With AI’s prevalence in our daily lives increasing, it is important to not only focus on bettering its functionalities and usages but to also focus on the ethics governing the way AI is created. I am not talking about potential doomsday events brought upon by AI that will suddenly become smarter than their creators, but more pressing issues that we are seeing currently related to gender bias and anti-discrimination guidelines that tend to be sidelined conversations when talking about any sort of product in its developing stage. With the exciting prospects that AI brings about, people often forget about other powerful consequences that the same technology could bring about as well. However, I think it is important to note these impacts that could be combatted sooner rather than later to prevent unconscious prejudices of developers from being implemented into programs or built into datasets used to train the software. 

     One of the first steps of implementing machine learning and artificial intelligence programs is to collect data samples that provide an accurate representation of real life scenarios. These data sets can take the forms of numbers, photos, text, transaction records, or anything else the program is required to analyze. As with any experiment, the more training data a machine has, the better. Once training data is obtained, programmers can choose a machine learning model to implement to train itself to recognize patterns and even make predictions based on these patterns. While it would be nice to assume that the training data provided always represents society as a whole, recent results from companies have proven that this is not the case. For example, in 2018, Amazon revealed that they had to get rid of their AI-based recruiting program once they realized that the system had taught itself to favor male candidates and gave resumes that included the words “women’s” or “woman”. The AI that Amazon used was trained by being given all of the applications that were submitted to the company over the past ten years, most of which came from men, reflecting the male dominance across the tech industry. So, the AI mistakenly recognized this pattern as a favorable trend and implemented it while screening new applications. 

     Although many people within the tech industry think it is important not to place many restrictions on AI as it is in its initial developmental stages, I think it is important for developers and leaders to understand their responsibility to ensure that the training data that they use to create their programs do not in any manner reflect personal or societal biases. I think the implementation of AI, when calibrated correctly could be the key to finally permanently removing barriers faced by minorities in the tech industry. However, if we are not thoughtful and conscientious about taking a few extra steps to ensure inclusivity, it could also solidify and create more barriers. 

It is no secret that many tech gadgets are created with the intention of having short lifespans. Although people often think of “planned obsolescence” as a wholly negative marketing strategy, it’s overly simplistic to completely condemn these practices. 

Planned obsolescence is a marketing strategy that has been around since the 1900s when the infamous “Phoebus Cartel” was exposed. In this scam, a bunch of light bulb manufacturers from around the world colluded to artificially decrease the lifespan of lightbulbs to just 1000 hours. Since then, many other industries have implemented techniques to shorten the lifespans of their products, forcing consumers to shell out more money to replace their products as repairing them would most likely cost more. This strategy can be clearly observed in the tech industry where newer and better versions of phones, laptops, headphones, and virtually any other gadget are released almost every year making previous models obsolete within a few years. People who have had phone screens or buttons break, or had their phone battery die, know how hard and expensive it is to find a way to repair it. Often people turn to the easiest solution to their problem, which is to throw out their “old” device and upgrade to the new model. Additionally companies also stop putting out updates for older models of certain devices since older models might not have the ability to adapt certain updates to older operating systems, also leading to people to ditch their old device in favor of a newer version. However, as we throw away machines and devices that do not perform as fast or efficiently as they used to, it results in a growing mountain of e-waste. According to the Guardian, “Last year alone, it was reckoned that more than 50m tonnes of it were generated globally, with only around 20% of it officially recycled.” The 50 tonnes of e-waste included household appliances, television sets, computers, smartphones, and tablets. 

However, planned obsolescence does not only benefit the manufacturer as it is made out to seem, it also benefits the consumer. As the tech market is so competitive, planned obsolescence forces technology to rapidly evolve at a faster pace than ever before. If planned obsolescence was not implemented in marketing technology, it definitely would not be evolving at such a rapid pace because there would not be a sense of urgency for tech companies to improve their product in such a way that people feel the need to upgrade their devices within a relatively short time frame. Additionally, many people might appreciate the fact that they can pay less for a smartphone whose lifespan is short because they know that a better smartphone will be released relatively soon. Although this way of thinking is beneficial to manufacturers and consumers, it is very detrimental to the environment, and many major companies have started to realize that too. Apple and Samsung have started phone recycling programs and car companies like Tesla have started programs to repurpose car batteries for home energy purposes. Additionally, instead of selling model after model of eclectic cars, Tesla has found a way to change its software so that most of their models can handle any of the updates they push, significantly reducing e-waste. Finding such a balance in the technology industry is important so that companies can reduce the harmful environmental impacts they have without compromising customer satisfaction. 

     Over the past year and a half, three words that I have been hearing a lot almost everywhere in the tech world are “Non-Fungible Tokens,” better known as “NFTs”. Up until a few days ago, I thought that NFTs were digital works that people buy for no real purpose. This is about as far as my understanding of this topic went, so decided to finally sit down and research NFTs.

     While I was trying to learn about NFTs, almost every article used words like “blockchain, cryptoart, and public ledger” and although I am a computer science major, I had absolutely no idea what those words meant. Honestly, I think the best way to understand what an NFT is, and how it’s shifting the way we value things while simultaneously exacerbating the climate disaster, is to break down the meaning of each of the words with examples that make sense to you. Let’s first break down the “Non-Fungible” part of NFT. Say that you want to buy a Taylor Swift vinyl. When you order a Red (Taylor’s Version) Vinyl, you’re not placing an order on a SPECIFIC vinyl, you’re not saying “I want vinyl #132639 you’re just telling the order form “I want a Red (Taylor’s version) vinyl, whichever one is sent to me, I’ll take it.” This is an example of something that is fungible, because as long as a red taylor’s version vinyl shows up at your door, you will have no idea how many times they replaced the same vinyl for whatever reason before it showed up on your doorstep, because to you, they’re all the same – they have the same songs and lyric sheets. Now, say that you have a vinyl that you just happened to be holding one day when you saw Taylor walking down the street. Naturally, you respectfully catch her attention and ask her for her autograph on the vinyl, and she ends up writing a special message for you on the vinyl as well. This specific vinyl is now NON FUNGIBLE because there is not a single other vinyl in this world like the one you have autographed by Taylor with a special message. The vinyl has emotional value, material significance, and is very valuable now because it is a scarce product since there is only one of them on the planet. This example can be generalized to basically everything in our world. Everything in our world is either fungible, or non fungible, and it should come as no surprise that non fungible items are often way more valuable than fungible items.

     Now that we’ve explained the NF part of NFT, let’s move on to the T, which stands for “Token.” To understand what a token is, you have to have a basic understanding of how the blockchain works, so here is an explanation based on what I gleaned from going down an NFT/Blockchain related rabbit hole. Say that you want to buy Taylor’s new lover album merch for valentine’s day. You want to buy the 30 dollar necklace, so you get your debit card out and enter your info onto the website. As soon as you enter the information, a message is sent to your bank saying “Hey, Radhika wants to spend 30 dollars on more Taylor Swift Merch, and the money needs to go into Taylor’s bank account” (an oversimplification, i’m sure it doesn’t just go straight to her bank account). The bank has a tally of all the money that went in and out of your account all day, everyday, and based on all of your transactions they have a calculated balance. Once the bank approves the transaction, the money is sent to Taylor’s bank where her bank is doing the same thing – keeping track of her daily transactions. Through this example, you can see that your money is basically a number seen on a screen, since not a lot of people carry all of their money around as cash these days. The bank keeping meticulous records is really important, and we trust them to do this correctly. A basic understanding of bank transactions is important because with the rise of the internet, people started to wonder if there was a way for people to continue performing these transactions without the banks acting as the middlemen – resulting in the blockchain. The blockchain basically does the same things that banks do, but instead of transactions being private between the banks, they are all recorded publicly on the internet. Let’s redo the previous example in a crypto world to see it in action. Say that the merch costs 30 crypto coins instead of American dollars. Now, instead of me entering my credit card information and waiting for my bank to validate the transaction, I enter my crypto information and it goes onto a public record, also known as a ledger, where everyone in the crypto world is connected and is keeping track of everyone’s transactions always, all the time. So, if I don’t have enough crypto currency to pay Taylor, everyone’s computers that are keeping track of everyone’s transactions will notice that there’s a discrepancy between my balance and my request, resulting in my transaction being rejected. If I did have 30 crypto coins, my transaction will be approved and be recorded in the public ledger. The ledger will now state that I have 30 less crypto coins and that Taylor has 30 more crypto coins, and EVERYBODY knows and has access to this information because the crypto world group validates every single transaction. 

     Now, let’s apply this concept to NFTs. Basically anything can be an NFT, there have been many NFTs made in the music industry, art industry, and even the sports industry with the NBA Top Shot NFTs that have gained a lot of popularity over the past year. NFTs can be photos, videos, gifs, tweets, audio clips, or anything that you want them to be. The only relevant and important detail is that since NFTs are digital pieces, they are bought using the blockchain technology, which verifies the authenticity and validates the scarcity of the NFT. Now, instead of people buying and paying crypto coins to just have more crypto coins as an investment, you can see a record on the public blockchain ledger saying “Radhika payed 30 crypto coins for an NFT of a video snippet of Taylor hitting the high note in All Too Well.” However, the description of the NFT will be encrypted so that no one else can copy the original NFT. This means that people can see what my NFT is if they want, and they can even try to reproduce it, but they will never be able to reproduce the original NFT, because it belongs to me and the description of the NFT is private through the help of encryption. 

     If you think about it, NFTs are the physical manifestation of how human psychology places value on things. The ONLY reason that an NFT is valuable, is because an entire group of people validates that what you bought is real and that there is only one of them. Humans have been trying to place value in things that have no inherent value for centuries. A good example of this phenomena would be the entirety of the Art industry. If you think about it, the only reason that certain artworks are worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars is because a group of people decided that a specific pattern of paint on a canvas is valuable because of its scarcity. However, now, instead of going to art galleries and auctions where you would bid for these valuable pieces of art, we have more sophisticated technology to do so through the internet and the blockchain. 

     It is important to note that the technology that is the backbone of the blockchain relies on computers doing a bunch of little calculations all day and night…forever. Most NFTs are stored on a blockchain called Ethereum, and Ethereum uses over 33 TWH (TeraWatt Hours) of electricity. Unless you know exactly how much power that is, it’s the same amount of power produced by the entire country of Serbia. As a quick reminder, generating electricity and energy usually comes from power plants burning fossil fuels that release carbon into the air, worsening the climate problem we are going through right now. Power consumption of the Ethereum blockchain increased exponentially over the past years and shows no signs of slowing down. Even after learning about NFTs it still blows my mind that this humongous amount of energy, that we can’t even begin to visualize, is being used to crunch numbers – because people are buying into this hype over how “owning” an NFT and having an entire group of people validate your transaction, somehow provides people with the approval they are seeking. TWH worth of carbon is being produced as the byproduct of the energy to merely crunch numbers! I feel like that’s such a trivial task that’s not really even helping improve the living conditions of anyone in the long run. Also, there’s the small added fact that it’s destroying the earth. It’s crazy how although NFTs live in the digital world, and none of it is tangible, however, the popularization of NFTs are having deeply irreversible effects on the real world.

Female representation in many STEM fields have drastically increased over the past century. In order to continue the growth we are seeing right now, and prevent it from going back to the way it was, it is important to understand why there was such a disparity between men and women in the STEM fields in the first place, and what change occurred that encouraged more women to join the STEM field. 

One of the most destructive ideas in the education system in the early 1900s was the belief that boys had the so-called “math brain,” and that girls had the “verbal skills” brain. Educators believed that boys had something fundamentally different about them that gave them an advantage to understand math and science better than girls ever could, because girls did not have the “math brain”. To no surprise, research now shows that there are no innate cognitive biological differences between men and women that pertain to their ability to perform math better than the other. Due to a lack of support and encouragement, many girls lost confidence in math and science as early as the third grade. Boys, on the other hand, were more likely to say they are strong in math by 2nd grade, before any performance differences are evident. In fact, a comparison of high school GPAs and credits relating to calculus, physics, and engineering related topics show girls performing at a higher level than that of their male counterparts . 

Another reason that many women did not want to join the STEM field was because of the male dominated workplace (which still exists to a lesser degree) that perpetuated exclusionary workplace practices. Women also found themselves in a never ending scenario of having to choose between being perceived as likable and therefore being more likely to be included in workplace decisions, or being perceived as a driven and ambitious worker, and therefore being excluded from workplace decisions. Since both likeability and competence are needed for success in the workplace, women found it extremely hard to thrive in a male dominated workplace. 

Some changes that that encouraged more women to join the STEM field were the formation of all girls clubs related to STEM fields which helped encourage girls to explore their interest in STEM related activities in a setting outside of the classroom. The most crucial advantage from all girls STEM clubs is that they also provide girls with older mentors which in turn provides them with a support system and someone they can talk about similar problems they face in the field. The mentor/ mentee relationship is something that was not available to young women in the early 1900s, as many women were not in the field. Mentors who have experience being in a male dominated workplace or facing obstacles related to being a woman in STEM can help guide younger women and show them that they are not alone in the struggles that they are facing. An increase in similar clubs at middle schools and high schools across the country would encourage more women to join the field and reverse the decrease in women joining the computing and engineering field. Another reason for the growth of women in the STEM field are because of Women in STEM programs started by established STEM companies that encourage more women to join the field or retrain to get back in the field. For example the “Amazon Amplify” and  IBM’s Tech Re-Entry Programme have helped fund women’s education in STEM related fields and help women who have taken a career break get the chance to retrain for AI and data science roles. Unlike in the 20th century, women who choose to take a sabbatical or a career break for personal reasons now have the chance to acquire the necessary skills and techniques to reenter the field. 

The increase in women joining the STEM field is very important for many different reasons. Looking at it from a financially beneficial point of view, according to a recent study conducted by WISE in partnership with Amazon showed that just a 10% increase of women in STEM careers could boost the UK’s economy by £3 billion. Giving women an equal opportunity to thrive in STEM fields would also help to narrow the gender pay gap, increase their economic security, and bring about a diverse and unbiased workplace. Looking through lenses of advancement for the future, the increase of women joining the stem field can lead to much more innovation from a new perspective leading to an overall betterment of the world.