Big Idea 5.3 - Computing Bias

Group Disussion Questions

Google “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?

Eighteen percent of users of facebook are between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four. The majority of Facebook users are 25 to 34, accounting for 29.9 percent of Facebook users. While Facebook caters to an older audience, TikTok caters to a younger audience, with 10-19-year-olds making up twenty-five percent of users. The exclusion between the apps is made by society and the actual app creators. TikTok makes fast-paced videos that appeal to younger audiences. This is harmful because it could harmfully target younger audiences. It should be corrected because it is harmful for society, but it is also good business for an app to have a targeted audience.

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?

Virtual assistants have female voices because female voices articulate more and make it easier for audiences to understand. This was purposeful because the virtual assistants can be more appealing to users if users can actually comprehend what the assistant is saying. It is harmful in a way, because it can possibly imply that females should be working in an assistant position.

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

An algorithm that influences my decisions is amazon. I tend to shop online a lot. And when I see something that is appealing on amazon, I tend to buy it. So the majority of my days are made up of searching amazon and spending money online.

Pair Disussion Questions

Does the owner of the computer think this was intentional?

No.

If yes or no, justify your conclusion.

He thinks that it wasn’t intentional, but he also thinks that it’s wrong and that it needs to be fixed.

How do you think this happened?

I belive the testing and programming was done for/on white people. It probably wasn’t programmed for black people or tested on black people.

Is this harmful? Was it intended to be harmful or exclude?

Yes, this is harmful. It could hurt the self-esteem young black Americans and change the way they view themself. However, I belive that this was accidental and isn’t meant to exclude.

Should it be corrected?

Yes, it should be corrected. If a person spends money on a computer, they have a right to expect that all features will work.

What would you or should you do to produce a better outcome?

To produce a better outcome, I think we should test the algorithm on all people of different ethnicities. We could also take user input and user opinions about the outcome and sue their input to make the product better.

Big Idea 5.3 - Crowdsourcing

Obtaining Data via Crowdsourcing

We have all experienced Crowdsourcing by using external data through API’s, namely RapidAPI. This data has influenced how we code and shown possibilities in obtaining and analyzing data. Discuss APIs you have used.

Last trimester, I used an API for books. The API had a book name, book author, rating, and summary. I used it to create a quiz about general knowledge of books.

We have all participated in code Crowdsourcing by using GitHub. Many of you have forked from the Teacher repository, or exchanged code with fellow students. Not only can we analyze GitHub code, but we can obtain profiles and history about the persons coding history. What is the biggest discovery you have found in GitHub?

The biggest discovery I have found in github is that you can clone other repositories and edit the repository into working for you. Also, if you are stuggling on a coding assginemnt, you can take a look at a classmate’s repository to look at their working code. It can help you get on the right track.

Kaggle datasets for code and science exploration. The avenue of data points us youtube or netflix channels. Analyzing crowd data helps us make decisions. Exam top 10 to 20. Did you see anything interesting?

In Kaggle, I saw a medical student mental health data set. I thought this was interesting because the mental health of medical students often isn’t talked about and should be. It could help young students make their decision if they want to go to medical school at the expense of their mental health.

Hacks

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

Since we have a large amount of computer science students, we could create a platform for homework help for code. Sometimes we tend to get stuck on certain parts of our homework, and we can ask others to send us the specific parts of their working code, post it on the platform, and explain the code. We would also be able to ask and answer questions.

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

Our project could be better with crowdsourcing because our game is a matching game that allows users to be ranked in a leaderboard. The more users play our game, the better. It’ll increase the number of competing individuals, resulting in a more competitive environment, resulting in more plays for our game. This also gives us more data to create the leaderboard.

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

During N@tM, we could ask students, parents, and teachers to play our game. And we can use their playing data to construct a very accurate leaderboard. In addition, we can ask users to comment on any ideas to grow our site for next year. They can comment what they liked, what they think we should improve, and ideas for any additions.