Critical Thinking Blog Post #4

The Promise and Peril of Robots in Film, TV and Real Life: Friends or Foes?

        What seems appealing to me of the clip from the movie, “Al” is the artificial intelligent who is designed to look like a sweet little boy, searching for his “biological” mother who just “throws him away” basically. “His love is real but he is not… He is the first robotic child programmed to love and co-exist as the member of the family”. The words love, child and family all just sound every appealing and pleasant, non-threatening; as Helen didn’t seem dangerous at all in the novel, Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers. She was just a computer software and didn’t have a body to move around with but had a mind of a child and thought like a child who seemed to fall in love with her co-creator as the little boy did in “AI”. In contrast, the clip from the movie, “I, Robot”, shows how robots are created to improve human life, “we trust them in our homes, we trust them with our children, we trust them with our lives, but can they be trusted?”. The clip shows Will Smith, the hero of the movie, interviewing a robot who is accused of murdering a human being and Smith goes around investigating the all whole system of how the robots are build and how they are programmed. In which, the scientist who built these robots tell him that the robots “cannot harm a human being, the first law of robotics” but then shows that the robots get out of control and start destroying civilization as we know it. Though, the robots might not seem dangerous, I feel as though they have the ability to harm and be threatening to the human society. Not just the movie, “I, Robot” but a lot of movies out there have the plot of their movies to be: first robots are made to improve and help the human race but somehow in the end the robots turn on them and become “evil” and harm us and so we need a human “hero” to come and rescue all of us from getting hurt from these “evil” robots.

         I believe that the threatening aspect of robots were that we as humans have a hard time adjusting to things that are unfamiliar and that is why people fear or feel threatened by robots but as we introduced ‘bots’ and/or software agents as we use the internet now, we’ve gotten used to non-human contact. Whether it be playing a chess game with a computer as your opponent or talking to “live” bots online. Nevertheless, I feel as robots have become accepted to most people in real life because all these crazy robots turning on us can only be in the movies, right? Robots are created now to be small and cute. I think people accept them more because it’s something new and exciting.

        I feel as though the vision of the future holds promise of advanced technology for human life because electrically engineered robots will be capable of doing things that humans can only image doing like fixing a car in record time or performing surgery with really steady “hands” but with all these amazing features that these robots might offer us, I sense that peril might come with that promise. Yes, advanced computer programmed bots seem to be helpful but those robots can’t last forever. It’ll probably last as long as the programmer will live. It can’t be perfect all the time; it might have a malfunction, say during an operation or something and kill the patient. The key is that you will never really know for sure what will happen with robots.

Critical Thinking Blog #3

Research Paper Brainstorm

All five research paper ideas sound so interesting that it’s so hard to narrow down to just two. What’s even harder is to pick just one topic out of those ideas. So far, as of right now I’ve gotten down to three research paper ideas: #2 Science and Technology: Promise and Peril, #3 Darwin and ?????? and #5 Historical Research on a Scientist (and a Controversy) from Our Syllabus. On #2 Science and Technology: Promise and Peril, just from reading the possible entries, I’m interested in writing about: The vision of a car-driven future of suburbia in the New York’s, The World’s Fair (1939-1940) vs. the problem of global warming, The promise of human cloning (stem cell research) vs. potential problems (from bioethicists, etc), or The promise of the Internet vs. it’s possible negative effects on our attention span, and/or physical or mental health. For #3 Darwin and ??????, I’m curious to write about Darwinism and religion, biology, and philosophy. I’m sure there was and still are so much controversy on Darwin and what he thought of all of these humanistic areas and I would like to find out more about them. For research paper idea #5 Historical Research on a Scientist (and a Controversy) from Our Syllabus, I am thinking about researching on Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, or Albert Einstein. I know little about each of these scientists so that’s why I want to do more research on their perspectives on science and what they have achieved in their life time.

After taking some time to think about which research paper idea I would like to write about, I narrowed down to #2 Science and Technology: Promise and Peril and #5 Historical Research on a Scientist (and a Controversy) from Our Syllabus. For #2 Science and Technology: Promise and Peril, I narrowed my interests to writing on: The vision of a car-driven future of suburbia in the New York’s, The World’s Fair (1939-1940) vs. the problem of global warming or The promise of the Internet vs. it’s possible negative effects on our attention span, and/or physical or mental health. For #5 Historical Research on a Scientist (and a Controversy) from Our Syllabus, I still haven’t decided who I would like to do more research on. Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, or Albert Einstein, I’ll be doing a little research on all three to decide on who I would like to look ahead with if I choose to pick #5 for my research paper idea.

Critical Thinking Blog #2

Does 'Popular Science' Today Awe Us, Inspire Us, or Threaten Us?

For today's critical thinking blog, I've chosen the famous and popular television show, 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'. 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' is a television show about scientists who use forensic science to solve crimes and "catch the bad guys". Forensic science is part of range of sciences usually used in the legal system related to a crime. Forensic science covers the scientific methodology and rules under which the evidence about an event, or an artifact, or some other physical item (such as corpues) are determined as being the case (wikipedia.com). I'm not a scientist or anything but most, if not ll of the forensic science that is used on the show seems to be pretty accurate. Methods used to find the 'time of death', 'the cause of death', using every fabric, piece of paper, and much more appear to be very precise. I don't think the show is "dumbed down" in any perspective, not on the scientific uses of things anyway. I think that many people who watch this show would most likely agree with me. I think that's one of the main reasons why this show is so popular. because it uses real life science and things that you can really use in the 'real world' and if you are a scientist, you can really understand mostly everything that the actors are talking about in the show.

Forensic science represented on the television show gives me a sence of awe. It inspires me because it shows how much science has advanced. This program shows how science and technology come together. Yes, of course you need the people (scientists and police officers) to look and find physical evidence to solve this crimes but without technology such as computers, updated scientific laboratory equipment for DNA testing, finger printing and so forth, solving these crimes in a fast paced time would not be possible and forensic science would have a huge disadvantage.

I believe shows like 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' and other programs like this in which presents and portrays science might have success with audiences because it uses real science with entertainment; it has a story to it. The anticipation of wanting to find out why the criminal committed such crimes and wanting to see if and how the "heroes" of the show will really solve these crimes. The audience wants to see them "catch the bad guys" and the relief that they feel in the end when everything is solved and over and waiting to see what's on next week is why I think shows like this have success. The failure part of it would be that the show might turn into more entertainment than facts and may be "dumbed down" enough that if real scientist and people that understand the material see that it isn't accurate, it might give those audiences a sense of failure of the show.