5.3

Intentional or Purposeful bias

think about “What age groups use Facebook” vs “… TikTok”? What does the data say? Is there purposeful exclusion in these platforms? Is it harmful? Should it be corrected? Is it good business?

  • Data suggests that Facebook is more popular among older age groups (Gen X, Baby Boomers)
  • TikTok is more popular among younger generations (Gen Z)
  • There’s a noticeable age divide between the two platforms
  • The exclusion is likely purposeful, although it’s not necessarily harmful
    • It is effective business because ads can be targeted to specific age groups

Why do virtual assistants have female voices? Amazon, Alexa Google, Apple Siri. Was this purposeful? Is it harmful? Should it be corrected? Is it good business?

  • Purpose of having female voices is unclear, but some theories suggest it’s because they are perceived as more helpful and trustworthy
  • Others argue that it reinforces harmful gender stereotypes and reinforces patriarchal norms
  • Some people believe it should be corrected by offering a wider range of voice options, including male and non-binary voices
  • I personally don’t see it as something that needs to be immediately corrected because there are already options to change it and it does not seem to cause major issues
  • Based on its benefits, having a female virtual assistant voice is likely a good business and leads to more interaction

Talk about an algorithm that influences your decisions, think about these companies (ie FAANG - Facebook, Amazon, Apple,Netflix, Google)

  • Netflix’s reccomendation algorithm is based on previously watched shows
  • Provides more content to users to keep them hooked onto the platform in a cycle

HP Video

Does the owner of the computer think this was intentional? If yes or no, justify you conclusion.

Yes, the owner thinks it was intentional. They explicitly stated that the computer was “racist” because it was not able to track him using the camera software.

How do you think this happened? Is this harmful? Was it intended to be harmful or exclude?

I think this happened due to a lack of testing with darker skin tones. It was most likely not intended to be harmful or to exclude, but was rather a mistake in the software development process.

Should it be corrected? What would you or should you do to produce a better outcome?

It should be corrected in order to bring more inclusiveness to HP products and their platform as a whole. I would ensure that I cover all test cases before releasing a product to production. This way, the amount of issues with the polished product would be minimal.

5.4

CompSci has 150 ish principles students. Describe a crowdsource idea and how you might initiate it in our environment?

One idea regarding “crowdsourcing” could be contributing to a shared GitHub repository. Each student can program their individual features in order to accomplish a very large task. One could initiate this by counting each contribution towards the students’ grades. This way, they will be forced to provide code to the class repository.

What about Del Norte crowdsourcing? Could your project be better with crowdsourcing?

I think that our project could be better with crowdsourcing through the crowdsourcing of data. We could have more users testing and entering our information on our platform. This way, we could find more niche bugs and accept feature requests from a large audience. As a result, our product would likely appeal more to a larger audience once it’s complete.

What kind of data could you capture at N@tM to make evening interesting? Perhaps use this data to impress Teachers during finals week.

At N@tM, we could collect user data and display it in an organized manner. One way we could do this is by performing statistical analyses on metrics we gather from user data. For example, we could collect and display average note length, calculator usage, and timer usage.