Post #8

DST_VS 3510HW: Guest Lectures and the Importance of New Perspective

Over the course of this semester, the guest lecturers have provided not only a vast assortment of knowledge and expertise on their own respective fields of study, but a complex and diverse array of personal experience and cultural backgrounds.. One lecture I found particularly intriguing, granted in part due to my background in Computer Science, was Scott Christiansen’s lecture on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Amidst his discussions on algorithm-generated YouTube recommendations and the prospect of automation taking over human jobs, he helped provide valuable insight into the potential implications of machine learning and the immense repercussions on society that the development of artificial intelligence can produce.

One aspect of Professor Christiansen’s lecture I found especially compelling — one which becomes more and more relevant as time passes and technology continues to develop — is the emerging dichotomy between the tremendous amount of data needed to be collected in the development of AI and the infringement of an individual’s right to privacy. As Christiansen points out, machine learning and artificial intelligence is dependent on gathering and processing information about the world around us and those who inhabit it, creating and forming patterns which synthesizes and transforms this information into genuine “learning.” Artificial intelligence and its applications have become intertwined into many aspects of our everyday lives: from social media newsfeeds to mediating traffic flow, from autonomous vehicles to connected consumer devices like smart assistants, voice recognition systems, and search engines. As artificial intelligence evolves, it enhances the ability to use personal information in ways that can intrude on the right to privacy by raising analysis of personal information to new levels of power, speed, and effectiveness, and with it comes the question: exactly how much is a machine entitled to know about us? Is it questions such as this which will only become more prevalent as the applications of AI expand, and why the work of professors such as Scott Christiansen, raising important questions and opening students to new perspectives, is so important.

This brings me to another one of my other favorite guest lectures from this past semester: Peter Mueser on In Praise of Cheap Labor. In his book on globalization, Manfred B. Steger speaks to the importance of recognizing different perspectives and approaching the phenomena of globalization from all sides: “the greatest challenge lies in connecting and synthesizing the various strands of knowledge in a way that does justice to the increasingly fluid and interdependent nature of our fast changing world” (Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, xvii). Over the course of his lecture, Dr. Mueser challenged many of the preconceived notions I had about the presence of cheap TNC labor in developing countries around the globe, shaping my views of it from one which sees it as purely evil, to one which sees it as a partially necessary one and recognizes the benefits it can provide. As Dr. Mueser suggested in his lecture, and Krugman points out in In Praise of Cheap Labor, denying these developing countries the ability to produce cheap labor would deny them the very means to compete and participate in a global economy, and would ultimately withhold from them the modest economic growth which provides them a favorable alternative.

However, as I’ve come to learn from the Kingdom of Bhutan, economic development doesn’t always have to come at great cost to the environment or the general well-being of the population. Over the course of the semester, as I’ve researched and learned more about the great country of Bhutan, its guiding philosophy of GNH is one aspect which sticks out to me as especially meaningful, presenting to the world an alternative form of governing which holds the metric of its people’s happiness over its GDP. In balancing economic production with sustainable development, it provides a valuable demonstration of things that we in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, can do to improve the quality of our citizens lives by investing in their well-being — through health care, education, environmental efforts, living wages — and strengthening their capacity for happiness.