04 - Privacy

04 - Privacy TedTalk

Carrington Finney

    In a digital age, concerns of privacy live in the minds of nearly every indivudal who interacts with technology. Gen-Z and Gen-X live in constant reminders of their "digital footprints," and websites can be used to gain access of knowledge to virtually any person you could think of. 

    Online, images can be traced back to people or can be reconfigured using AI platforms, social media apps trace finger strokes and movement on their platform, and personal information is shared across apps. Even offline personal privacy is violated, through the tracking of license plates and cell phones by local and federal governments. 

    As someone who likes to keep the roads hot, this bothers me. As mentioned in the TedTalk, it's not as much the fact that there are license plate cameras, but moreso the corruption that has taken place because of these small invasions of privacy. As attorney Catherine Crump mentions in her short lecture, exploitation has occured at the expense of the very law enforcement meant to protect us. And though these breeches of privacy are small, they have a massive impact on government transparency. 

    Although these issues are prevelant, they are just the tip of the iceberg. In a high-tech world, measures of privacy breeching are reaching further than before. Technology enables the capture and storage of moments that would've been otherwise private, making it easier to alter the videos or hold blackmail. Additionally, the government primarily enables this behavior: It's currently legal in 37 states to wiretap a phone or record a conversation with one-party consent. This bleeds into social media as well, where apps collect data and sell it to marketing companies or CRMs to predict trends.

    Government surveillance in the digital age is a double-edged sword. In a way, there's no escape from it. Thinking about my everyday life, I use technology for practically everything; I use it to do my school work, contact friends and family, even order the food I eat every day. Without technology, my day-to-day life would not succeed, no doubt. Even limiting app access would severely affect my algorithm and therefore affect my direct influences. In implementing surveillance techniques in the fiber of social media's existence, there is no true way to separate the two. 

    In recent years, the issue with privacy has become more complex and entangled into our everyday lives. In the grand scheme of things, there is little we can do unless we advocate for change worldwide. 

03 - AI's affect on Communication Careers

 AI's Affect on Communication Careers 

Carrington Finney

    Human communication is sacred and interwoven within all parts of human connection. Our very brain chemistry supports this fact; interpersonal and intrapersonal communication are essential to our development and socialization as human beings. Not only does communication make up the fibers that help humans relate to themselves and one another, but communication has also been discovered to be used as a tool to measure human nature and responses to stimuli in the world around us. 

    The depth of communication was far over my head when I dove into this major. The study I used to believe was working aesthetics into everyday life has started to become a whirlwind of psychological, marketing, and ethical tactics to produce many outcomes, all dependent on the area of communication being studied. 

    I personally am of the strong belief that AI can never truly replace a human. On a global-scale, there is now an added value of a "handmade" item or certain trades, but there is no doubt that in an information economy, humans also hold value for the screens that are always conveniently in their pocket or bag. So, grappled with this love for communication, but also aware of the domination technology has placed on our lives in the 21st century, I turned to the question of how the unchanging rise of AI will affect my future as I know it. 

    It seems for now, I'm safe. As much as humans love to consult AI daily, and it seems that huge corporations would implement it, humans don't quite trust it all the way yet. Although the potential for innovation is massive, as expressed by multiple CEOs of large companies that dominate globally, the risk for data and information leaks, misinformation, and general miscommunication about the identities of companies seems to ward off the possibility of AI taking a human's full-time job. 

    In the grand scheme of things, larger companies may use AI to run analytics, run social media pages, and create digital advertising, resulting in the loss of some communication-targeted careers; However, as highlighted before, communication is incredibly broad and diverse, allowing for graduates of communication programs to step into numerous roles. For example, although I am a communication major, I've been offered internships in marketing, medical sales, and social work - all of which loosely apply to the domains of communication, but aren't communication-specific jobs. Additionally, with the lack of trust in AI, businesses are adopting a human-centric approach (Marketing 3.0 - the current market) to truly boost their company's ethics and morals. 

    In summation, AI is at risk of taking my job, your job, everyone's jobs. The little incongruities in AI, however, make the measures in which AI tools would have to be consistently perfect, so as to avoid larger errors than humans trained in a specific skill could usually make. The age of AI is approaching, it's true, but if humans were to stand by the communication networks we're fundamentally built on, we won't have to worry about AI taking our jobs - what the people of the world decide to do with that information is up to them!