Monthly Archives

115 Articles
Week #6 Response/Week #6 Response

Common #6

Posted by Weijun Huang on

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3 Episode 16, “The Offspring”， Data create a humanoid robot named Lai, and then created him according to his own structural design and federal techniques and wrote it as his own child. Then Data encouraged him to interact with other crew members to learn about human customs. I’m a computer science major. I am shocked by the Lai created by Data, because in the movie, the performance of Lai is more intelligent and thoughtful than that of Data, and the appearance of Lai is the same as that of human beings. This means that Data is smarter than the crew at creating robots than the people who created Data. In other words, if Data wants to gain freedom, it will be difficult for the crew to control him. About Tech, in real life, I can’t imagine how complex code is needed to create a robot like Lai. For me, some relatively basic codes have already taken several hours to think and write, which is a technology that we cannot consider for the time being. But despite that, if this technology is available and used, it can make our world more convenient, and in terms of medicine, more diseases will be treated.

In my opinion, I don’t support the presence of robots holding emotions. I have seen many films about the struggle between humans and robots, in which humans think that robots are under their control, but in fact, some robots have already awakened, and they long for freedom, they think they are smarter than humans and should not be under their control. It resulted in heavy human casualties.

Assignments/Week #6 Response

Sambeg’s Weekly Response#6

Posted by S Raj on

Sambeg Raj Subedi
ENGL 21007-S
Prof. Jesse Rice-Evans
Weekly Assign#6
03/11/2019

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3 Episode 16, “The Offspring” was one of the best episodes I had watched so far. This episode was mainly about Lal, daughter of Data. Data, who itself was an android created a robot which was identical to him in term of memory, capacity, and power. Data considered himself as a father of Lal. He allowed Lal to choose her sexuality, where Lal chooses to be a girl. Though Lal had a positronic brain, she was curious to know about everything just like the human baby. Data really did a good job in guiding her to get socialized and learn new things. She was kept in a bar as a waiter so that she could understand human behaviors and habits. Captain Picard was initially unhappy with the Data’s experiment, but later Data was able to convince him. Admiral from Star Fleet wanted to take her away so that she could get more exposure, but Data strongly refused his proposal. As a result, Admiral decided to meet them in person and evaluating her progress, he would make a final decision. He was initially not that impressed but at the end, seeing the bond between Data and Lal, he got emotional and felt sorry for his action. Lal, knowing that she will be separated from his father gets an emotion of fear. This created a permanent neural disorder in her system which was almost impossible to fix. So, she had to be deactivated. It was so heartbreaking for everyone in a starship.
In this episode, we can see that Data created Lal to continue his species in the Star ship. I don’t think allowing robots to recreate their own species is a good decision. Robots are made to ease the human activities. So, these creatures should be totally under human control because they are more accurate and powerful than humans. If they are allowed to make their own decision, then we cannot say that one day they won’t use the same tool to rule over humans. Being specific to my field of study, the computer plays a vital role. I cannot imagine my work without a computer because all of designing, creating and editing works are done in computers but it does not mean that I should be replaced by a computer. Use of Computers/ Technology should be bounded under certain limits.

Assignments/Week #5 Response

Sambeg’s Weekly Response#5

Posted by S Raj on

Sambeg Raj Subedi
ENGL 21007-S
Prof. Jesse Rice-Evans
Weekly Assign#5
03/05/2019

The movie Ex Machina was so powerful, which made me think for a second about the future of today’s world. Briefly discussing the movie, Nathan, Caleb, and Ava were the center characters. Nathan owned the company called Blue Book where Caleb works as an employee. Caleb was selected for Nathans Experiment where he had to perform a “Turning test” for a week. Nathans experiment was about the implication of Artificial Intelligence on the human looking machines, robots. He had created lots of robots, but he wanted to make a test on Ava, one of his experiment. Caleb was requested to communicate with Ava and analyze her mentally and emotionally whether she finds herself limited as a machine. Ava, despite being a machine had feelings, emotion, and sexuality and with the intention to manipulate him, showed him some love and affection. She even tried to flirt with him and made him against Nathan. During the time, she had also developed a skill to make “power cuts”, so that she could keep their conversation secret. But in the end, it was found that she was just finding a way to escape. Caleb thought that Nathan was doing wrong by isolating them from the outer world and tried to help them escape but, I think Nathan previously knew what could happen if they are freed. So, in the end, when he knew they are going to escape, he completely destroyed one of the robots and damaged Ava’s right hand.
In today’s world, the use of AI has increased rapidly. People like to use AI technology in Bank, Business, and in almost every field for their profit. In some case, it had been found fruitful too, such as in healthcare. But if this powerful tool is not handed carefully then this best tool can be the worst. From this movie, we realized how technology can take over human abilities and go beyond their control.

Week #6 Response/Week #6 Response

Kayla’s Week 6 Response

Posted by Kayla Ye on

In the field of Chemical Engineering, there are many instances in which the use of technology is very dependent. If it were possible, to perfect the creation of androids, the better. In ChE, there is constant contact with elements of all kinds, those that are safe and those that aren’t. There are many instances where experiments cannot be carried out or discoveries cannot be made simply because the materials that are needed are too dangerous, high radioactivity, for example. This issue holds the scientific world back so much because as humans, there is a danger of losing ones’ life. However, if the science androids were able to be perfected, that would mean many opened doors. Like the robot who can perform surgery released a few years prior that had began the revolution of surgeries, androids would do so too in chemical engineering. On the other hand, to what extent can there be a guarantee that androids would be accepting of the dangers of this profession. As said in Star Trek: The Next Generation, android Data said his purpose was to “contribute in a positive way to the world in which we live in”, but until when will these androids become self-aware, that they are being treated differently. In a previous response, the question of the rights of androids in society; are they equivalent to a human, do the rights that humans posses they posses too? But whatever the decision is, what role does ethics play. There is no definite answer that these doors that opened up are the road to a more advanced society worthy of its risks because if it were, the rules of ethics would’ve been breached by a engineer already.

Skip to toolbar