# Reading Responses Set Two:

## Finding someone & living alone 3/13/25
Articles:

The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating By Christian Rudder
Why Online Dating Can Feel Like Such an Existential Nightmare By Derek Thompson
How we fell out of love with dating apps By Robyn Vinter
Living alone in America Joseph Chamie

Response:
The landscape of the world is ever changing in my grandmothers generation it was typical to get married and have a house and family now in the generation that is more “millennial” it is more common to focus on yourself and your career instead of families and marriage, is this due to a fact that so of our generations rely on our phones to find our “one true love” or is it by choice to live alone and just the next upcoming normal. In “living alone in America” Chamie makes a point that “since 1950, the proportion of adults living alone in the U.S. has tripled to about 15 percent.” Meaning that “36 million men and women now live alone, representing a record high of 28 percent of all U.S. households” This made me think of the concept of a “girl boss” and the idea that america seems somewhat insecure about the idea of a women being in a independent setting in control and a power position on her own, instead of family oriented and the “women of the house”. How does the idea of online dating tie into all of this?

A line that resonated with me from the dating app related articles was this line from Robyn Vinter, “have become such a ubiquitous part of the modern dating scene that it can be difficult to remember how connections were made before they popped up” this made me think of the idea that if dating apps are making the act of meeting people seem so mindless and disconnected what even really is the point or enjoyment of doing it, are we just meeting and matching with people to simply say we are not alone to satisfy something wither for ourselves or someone in our lives that might consider us lonely otherwise. The act of living alone and maybe not caring as much about being alone or trying to not force something with an app simply in my opinion just seems to be the new ever changing landscape for this generation..not a cry for loneliness or being too career focused.

## Manipulated 3/20/25
Articles: Joseph Reagle, Manipulated: Which ice cube is the best?,Reading the Comments
Geoffrey Fowler,Fake reviews are illegal and subject to big fines under new FTC rules (alternative)

Response:
As a society why are we so obsessed with rating something on a number scale this in more recent years has also translated to rating people. In a world where we all view things very differently, what is it meant by being a 10/10 or 5 stars when someone's version of 5 star could be another's 2 stars. Both articles take an in-depth look at the idea of online review and the idea of a percentage of them being faked and what can be done about this. Honestly when first looking at the prompt question I assumed that the question asking what you could trust meant like what level do you think that person's opinion is reliable or how credible are they in the subject matter, until reading the articles I did not think much about the fact that “As many as 30 percent to 40 percent of online reviews are fabricated” (Fowler, 2023).

The idea of it being illegal to leave fake reviews is intriguing to me because hypothetically as technology gets smarter and smarter could it make the reviewers' tech untraceable and then that is a way they could dodge paying the large fee? In my opinion as far as the rules go I feel that it makes more sense to fine the larger corporation conducting the instruction, referred to as the “middle man” in the text because for example google as a corporation has more money than the person who has been instructed to fake the review. In my opinion the idea of rating systems are very flawed and if almost half of the reviews are fake, how are we supposed to find them helpful or truthful? We might as well just try it for ourselves at that point and stop obsessing over the numbers.

## Artificial intelligence 4/1/25
Bots are now capable of creating astounding prose and images. What do you think the consequences will be?

I feel like the idea of artificial intelligence honestly scares lots of people because they think the technology is going to cause an uprising and eliminate their jobs, which I understand is an ok valid point, However what scares me the most is the fact that AI in my eyes is creating a laziness epidemic. I say this as I do think tools such as Chat GTP are helpful for creating an outline, helping revise or summarize some point, but in my opinion asking Chat to write your research paper or do your homework is just flat out lazy. We go to university to learn and part of learning is being creative and contributing your own human perspective and creativity, a robot isn’t going to do that, they are just going to spit out a mainstream easily repeatable response, and what is it worth if you go to school to not exercise your own brain.

The reading “How GPT models work” by Ben Stollnitz helped me gain new insight on a topic that is talked about quite commonly now but taught me a lot more than I initially knew. In the reading he defines and explains the different models and how they are implemented. “ChatGPT, on the other hand, is a conversation-style model, which means that it performs best when we communicate with it as if we’re having a conversation.”(Stollnitz,2023) This description was quite unsettling to me as the other models are less communication style and rather small inputs and result structure. The idea that you would describe a back and forth with an AI software as wanting to be conversational and communicative almost on a human level is scary. I think the consequences will be that people will continue to use AI to promote laziness rather than as a helpful tool. As well as technology advances I am worried AI will be tailored to become more “human-like”.

## Algorithmic Bias 4/3/25

It seems that in the current world we live in everything is labeled in a political way, If you like a certain group you lean left or vice versa. When thinking about whether this applies to what AI tools we chose to use or how the AI sources and choses to respond to our questions, it's a computer so can it have biases or certain views? In my opinion yes because it was programmed by a human at its start so it holds some of their views even if it was unintentional, everyone has their own biases even if they don’t realize it's just human nature.

As AI is on the rise what are the consequences will they “out smart” or replace humans.
Personally, where AI is at right now I don’t believe it has the threat to replace humans for actual jobs where higher level thinking is required, basic tasks however yes. At the end of the day they are robots so they lack the emotional aspects that humans have but by no means does that mean the development in their skills like image and text curation does not put me or others on edge.

I found the search on different types of hands very fascinating, within the article “This Is Why Some People Think Google’s Results Are “Racist”” Rutherford and White explain that when Burai searched for just generic hands the results that came up were caucasian/white human hands, in order to get african american hands she had to specifically type in “black hands”. The thing I found most troubling about these findings was that Burai found when Black hands were looked up they sometimes had white hands reaching out to almost act as help, kinda demonstrating the white saviorism was built into the computers result process which means whoever programed these results was most likely holding some racial biases towards these ideologies which then makes the software “racist”. I think the problem with these bots is not necessarily the bots themselves but the people who are in charge of programming them. If we are not careful about who has the power to do this it could become disasters and produce harmful, hurtful and misinformed images, and textual answers.

## Push Back 4/14/25

I feel as if I was always constantly asking my mom and dad for a phone as I was one of the last ones in my friend group to get one and I just wanted to be online and in the loop socially. I got my first phone when I was 14 as my parents thought it was warranted with the transfer to high school ahead. I now wish my younger self could understand my parents' perspective of not wanting me to have my face in a phone all day and as dumb as it sounds but go outside and enjoy nature.

As a college student I feel like it is rare for me to not touch my phone or computer within the first five minutes of waking up and probably touch it during the five minutes before I go to bed. I am constantly online whether it's for my education, social or just mindless. In the reading “Pushback: Expressions of resistance to the ‘evertime’ of constant online connectivity” Morrison and Gomez explain that many users who first really embraced this technology way and idea of being constantly connected are pushing back and I resonate with this.

The reading characterized these people as wanting to look for ways of resistance to being permanently connected. I practice this by adding some balance here and there. If I am doing an assignment on my computer for an hour I try to balance it with going outside for about the same time not only to give myself a break but to disconnect from the technology. I want to be reachable for my family and friends but also not face deep in my phone for constant contact.