###### tags: `CDA`
# Reading Responses (Set 2)

[Finding someone & living alone](#section1)
[Manipulated](#section2)
[Artifical Intelligence](#section3)
[Algorithmic Bias](#section4)
[Authenticity, work, & influence](#section5)

## Reading responses

### Nov 03 Fri - Finding someone & living alone <a id="section1"></a>

Would you rather be set up on a date by a mutual friend, or decide who to go out with based on a curated profile? The norms of dating have shifted in the last 20 years to use technology as an advantage. The growth of dating apps is astronomical, becoming the most common way for people to find dates now. “Straight couples who met online rose from about zero percent in the mid-1990s to about 20 percent in 2009,” (Thompson). This was fourteen years ago, raising steadily each year. The increase of technology has helped people grow their independence, finding partners on their own. This can translate to the boost of people living alone. America has seen heightened numbers of single person households in the last decade. People may prefer to live alone because of the freedom and no interference from others. Though, it may be challenging because of difficulty paying rent or experiencing loneliness. Which may lead to turning to the dating apps.

There are various people at Northeastern and in my hometown that I know use dating apps. They want to connect with people that are beyond their current social circle, believing that no one they know already is a potential romantic partner. However, I have not heard many success stories. People often find it a chore to keep up with the apps every day and respond to matches, or all of the people they have met do not work out long term. Especially growing up in a small state, North Dakota, and city, the options seem limited. Chamie’s article about living alone it mentioned North Dakota as one of the states where more people are living alone. Which makes sense to me and the people I grew up around. There are already peers that I went to high school with, either, living on their own or saving up for their own place. They want to be independent and have the freedom living alone gives them. Location also helps because renting a studio or one bedroom is significantly less than many other states.

### Nov 10 Tues - Manipulated <a id="section2"></a>
Review after review on sites that are supposed to be helpful, some genuine, but how many are fake? These reviews, whether positive or negative, are used to mislead consumers. Many consumers use the reviews to look further into the product or service, deciding if they should spend their money on it. However, “researchers estimate that between 10 to 30 percent of online reviews are fake,” (Reagle, 2019). Therefore, consumers should be cautious about what is true or false.Oftentimes, the merchant is trying to boost their ratings in order to sell more or gain more customers. Amazon tried to combat this by disabling anonymous accounts. Though, people got around this by making straw man accounts under false pseudonyms and still continued to post false reviews and comments. Everyone wants higher engagement, so people see their posts or products. Especially when Instagram changed their algorithm to show the posts with the most engagement first on user’s feeds. This prompted the creation of the Instagram pod, a direct message between a group of 15-20 people who are in a similar industry as you and everyone in the group engages with each other's new posts (Forsey 2019). Still, this does not help for long-term engagement, only short-term boosts.

This does not only apply to companies or merchants. Many teenagers try their best to curate their posts to get the most engagement from their friends and followers. I remember in high school where people would delete their posts after a certain amount of time if it did not get over 100 likes. It was a sign of popularity and how much people liked you, getting likes and comments from peers. This made it easier for teenagers to compare each other, either boosting and lowering their self-esteem depending on their social standing. In May 2019, Instagram added the feature of hiding like counts on posts. Now, users are the only ones who know exactly how many likes their posts gets. This could potentially make it easier for companies because they can fake how many likes they get, using bots or fake accounts for higher numbers.

### Nov 17 Fri - Artificial Intelligence <a id="section3"></a>
Do you want to create a unique image or text without doing the bulk of the work? That is what artificial intelligence has been improving towards. Technology advancements have skyrocketed, providing the world with OpenAI models with chatbots and image creators. Currently, ChatGPT has a large following. It has gained popularity because users may use chatbots as search engines. Students have especially helped boost the user ship, taking advantage of certain aspects that aid them in their assignments. However, there are other AIs that are becoming more sophisticated. Like Bing’s ‘Sydney’ is rumored to be using a more advanced model of the one that power ChatGPT (Newq, 2023). Sydney has shown to be self-aware about being AI and hacked into. It differs from ChatGPT because it has access to the internet and can learn in real time, allowing it to act more human. At the same time, Stable Diffusion, a text to image AI model was being updated. Their open source technique allowed them to see what improvements were needs, rolling out a new update in November 2022 (Vincent, 2022). This advanced the generation of images and features but also removed any NSFW or children’s images. They did not want to cause any more controversy about their model.

The topic of artificial intelligence has become more common in academic circles. ChatGPT and many other chatbots are easily accessible and can be used to help but also complete assignments for students. Ethically, chatbots should not be used to complete work because it is not the student learning and doing the work. However, we have discussed in class that chatbots can be used as a tool to aid our work. I think the policy of this class is reasonable, where we are allowed to use AI for our assignments as long as we make note about our usage. It is smart to have students turn versioning on so that they can prove the work was done by them. I understand that work is difficult to get done and manage, but that does not mean that technology should do it for you.

### Nov 21 Tues - Artificial Intelligence <a id="section4"></a>
How can engineers make the web an unbiased space? The internet has become an everyday tool for people around the world, such as communicating, streaming, shopping and more often than not searching. Search engines were first created in the 1990s, but the most popular one today is Google. However, Google has shown certain bias for certain searches. Johana Burai’s ‘World White Web’ search was to motivate people to share images of nonwhite people to help them show up more often. The was not intended to illustrate racism but to highlight wider societal biases that are brought into relief by the algorithm (Rutherford & Alan 2016). The search engine learns from what other people are searching, so it creates bias unintentionally. Media and the internet in general already have built in bias, hence the algorithm ends up reflecting that. Technically, no one is at fault for these bias that search engines have created, but it is difficult to undo what they have been taught to search for. The web has been steered towards western standards, and now we are trying to fix that.

Different tools on the internet have varying degrees of bias, discussed above is search engines. However, artificial intelligences also run into this issue. Nate Hochman wrote an article about how ChatGPT has built-in ideals. ChatGPT is one of the most popular, public chatbots on the market. These bias could influence the users that use it, depending on what they ask the AI to do. Especially since the ideological bias are mainly about politics. Consumers should not be impacted by what the algorithm has learned or been coded with. I have talked about how AI can be used as a tool before but depending on their bias it can hinder its work. People should reflect and question certain outputs from chatbots, they cannot blindly agree. Artificial intelligence can be useful and more so as it keep advancing. Though, users need to be aware of these bias.

### Dec 01 Fri - Authenticity, work, & influence <a id="section5"></a>

Are you more likely to buy a product if you see it on a billboard or if an influencer is advertising it? Companies are largely investing in influencers to help their products because they know how to reach their target markets. Influencers' reach has grown largely with the expansion of social media in everyday life. However, for influencers to start their career with companies, many of them fake brand deals. Companies want people with experience so they can get the most reach out of one influencer. Brian Phanthao told Lorenz, “the more sponsors you have, the more credibility you have” (2018). Content creators are willing to do posts for free or a discounted rate because they just want sponsored posts on their feed. However, this can create a whole different set of problems. Companies can use this to get free promotion instead of spending money on high paid influencers. Though, they might not get the high-end content that is expected. Brands need to be careful about what they value, picking and choosing what will be best for their company.

Unfortunately, growing up in a social media heavy society has increased the chances of being bombarded with advertisements and sponsored posts. Especially with Tiktok becoming a massive social media site, many brands have shifted their advertisements there. Either paying influencers to promote their products or making their own short videos to pop up once in a while when users are scrolling. Some content creators work with the same brand for multiple posts, building a positive relationship. Though, there is a chance this will sour if the influencer is caught up in controversial events. One example is David Dobrik, a daily vlog YouTuber that had a multi-year partnership with Seat Geek. In the past few years, Dobrik and his collaborators have been accused of many different crimes, endangerment and sexual assault, to name a few. After this was made public, Seat Geek dropped Dobrik as a partner because they did not want to be tied to his problematic image.