Tag: Technology

• Is Time Travel in 4-D Space Logically Possible?

  April 12, 2021 5:19 pm Comments Off on Is Time Travel in 4-D Space Logically Possible?

  The idea of time travel has been explored in science fiction countless times over the last century. Authors have fantasised about visiting the future and changing the past. The development of general relativity revealed the real scientific possibility of time travel in our universe. However, considering the universe in a realistic manner places some constraints on actual time travel, and there are many paradoxes which suggest logical inconsistencies in the concept of time travel. 
  We can consider some of these constraints on time travel in four-dimensional space by expanding upon the time travel presented in some works of pop-culture such as Terminator and Harry Potter.
  We must firstly build a strong concept of what time travel in four-dimensional space would look like.  Below is an illustration of the ‘block universe’ theory, which depicts a ‘block’ that contains every event in space-time that has and will ever occur. (Note, the real ‘block’ is four dimensional.)

   
  A main requirement is that the past and future we are traveling to must actually exist. Time is a space-like dimension. So while we may intuitively believe that time is somehow fundamentally distinct from space, we should instead treat time as the fourth dimension of space.
  The features we observe that distinguish time from space can be accounted for by assuming that we are embedded into this 4-D universe in such a way that we interact differently with one of the dimensions. A useful analogy is that of free motion through 3-D space.
  When moving through space under a constant velocity, we can’t independently come to rest, or change directions in space. Similarly, in the fourth dimension, ‘time’, we can imagine the motion we usually experience through time as ‘falling’ through the fourth dimension at a constant velocity, with nothing to“grab” on to  alter, stop or reverse our motion through time.
  This suggests that in traveling through time backwards, we would be no more able to ‘’jump in time’ than we are able to ‘jump in space’! A great example of this is the ‘time turner’ in the third Harry Potter film, when time rewinds from the perspective of Harry and Hermoine for them to reach the past. 
  The time traveller must also stay within the 4-D universe. When entering the past or future, they cannot actually move to some alternate universe, or another “branch of spacetime”.  Both Harry Potter and Terminator adhere to this condition, as interactions between time travelers and others in the past are consistent with past events in the same universe.
  The dominant threat to the idea of time travel is a class of theoretical situations called paradoxes, and specifically those involving ‘closed time-like curves’ (CTCs). 
  CTCs, which are often referred to as ‘time loops’, are paths through spacetime in which an object returns to its initial position in both space and time. The idea of time travel, including scientific explorations of the concept, allows the existence of CTCs. This creates a range of paradoxes. 
  An example of this is the grandfather paradox. This paradox describes a traveler whose grandfather died in a certain year after their birth, who travels to the past to kill her grandfather before her parents (grandfather’s child) have been conceived. While the time traveler has every intention of killing her grandfather, if time travel is consistent, there must be something preventing her from doing so, since she has been born, of her grandfather’s child. 
  One response is the idea of some set of rules determining what can and cannot be changed in the past.
  In Doctor Who, the Doctor and their companions are depicted going back in time and making alterations which change the (future) scenario which they left. In modern Doctor Who, it is revealed that “some things are fixed”, while “some things are in flux”, and that only ‘timelords’ (the Doctor) are able to tell such events apart. 
  Yet in reality, there is an effect called the ‘Butterfly effect’, describing how even a tiny change in the starting conditions of a chaotic system will have a huge impact after enough time passes.
  So any past scenario that a time-traveller might enter could be described as a chaotic system and, as such, any change that the time traveller makes will have drastic consequences in the future from which they came. This suggests that there cannot be, as Doctor Who would suggest, some changes that can be made without significant consequences, while other changes cannot be made. 
  The repercussion of the butterfly effect for time travel is that there can be no ‘original version’ of the past that a time traveler changes, but instead, whatever actions a traveler performs in the past must truly have occurred in that time period. 
  Harry Potter also employs a list of time travelling rules which must be followed in order to avoid dangerous changes to the future. However, these do not imply any sense of an “original version” of the past. The time travelers were always there – e.g, Harry and Hermonie at Hagrid’s hut.  In this respect, Harry Potter actually provides a better explanation!  You cannot change the past at all, and the reason that the past never consists of time travelers killing their own grandfathers is because there are rules against this. 
  Nonetheless, this might still be an unsatisfactory response, as rules can always be broken! In the film, Terminator is sent to the past to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, who is alive in the future. In the future, John becomes aware of this and sends his friend, Kyle, back to the same point in the past to stop the Terminator from killing his mother before she can give birth to him. Kyle succeeds, and on the mission falls in love with Sarah Connor and becomes John’s father. As John is alive in the future, it must always have been the case that Kyle was his father, suggesting that the events in the past always had to occur in the way they did, otherwise John wouldn’t have been alive in the future to cause Kyle and the Terminator to travel back. The narrative of Terminator seems to suggest that, if such a paradox is set up, some other events will prevent the paradoxical situation from playing out.
  In order to save the possibility of time travel, and more rigorously explain a universe where such a CTC paradox could never occur, we may consider two theories: determinism, and Novikov’s self-consistency principle.
  Kyle could not have had free will once he travelled to the past, as in the future he came from, John was alive, having been born the son of Sarah and Kyle. This implies that, while in the past, a time traveler moves within a completely determined world. 
  Similarly, if a time traveller were to enter the future and then return to the present, events in the future which lead her to return in the precise manner which she does are completely determined. Thus, anyone else travelling to the future, or anyone who lives their life at “normal speed” in that time has no free will within that time period. If time travel takes place, the universe is determined from the Big Bang until that latest point to which a time traveler travels.
  Assuming that any time is available to a time traveler, and she can travel as far into the future as it exists, we must accept one of two things: either that the act of travelling to a point in time fundamentally alters the universe to be determined until that point, or that a universe in which time travel can occur is already deterministic.  However, as change is something dependent on time, the first option is unviable as the alteration occurs ‘outside’ of time.  So, a four-dimensional universe where time travel is possible must be deterministic! 
  Now, we also need some sort of explanation to ensure that CTC paradoxes can’t physically occur.  One way is through considering Novikov’s self-consistency principle, which states that the probability of any event which could cause a paradox, or a change to the past, is zero. In other words, there cannot exist multiple ‘branches’ of a four-dimensional universe – there is only one ‘timeline’.
  In practice, there are many ways a paradox-spawning event could never exist.  For instance, we may just never know what could cause a paradox! Or, it might be the case that no one ever tries to, or that if they do, something goes wrong, preventing them to do so.  But in any case, the paradoxical situation will never be set up properly. The self-consistency principle would explain why the Terminator could never have killed Sarah Connor, and has the same effect as the time travel rules mentioned in Harry Potter without the possibility of rule-breaking.
  Of course, it’s also possible that we don’t live in a four-dimensional space, and that branching of space-time could accommodate changing of the past, present and future by time travelers with free will in an undetermined universe. However, in a four-dimensional space where there is no determinism, or the self-consistency principle does not hold, CTC paradoxes present a logical contradiction to the possibility of time travel. In a four-dimensional space which is determined and self-consistent, time travel is logically possible, but time travelers are unable to alter the past or future, and must journey through space and time to reach their destination. 
  Unfortunately, this suggests that the events in many fictional depictions of time travel could never occur in a four-dimensional space, though the time travel related events of The Terminator or Harry Potter remain logically possible!
   
   
  Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

  Martha Reece

• Is Google Going Away?

  February 20, 2021 7:28 pm Comments Off on Is Google Going Away?

  As a Science honours student, Andy’s column ‘Next Week in the Future’ examines current issues in science and tech, to keep you informed for when these topics come up during conversation. 
   
  For the past month, every time a Google search runs a little slow on my computer, I think, “Oh my god, they’ve taken it away.”
  That’s what Google has threatened to do over the news media bargaining code written by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and currently being considered by parliament as a bill. Should the bill become law, “[Google] would have no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” wrote Google Australia’s Managing Director, Mel Silva. This is the same bill that drove Facebook to wipe all news content (even the Betoota) from Australian Facebook feeds early on Thursday. What about this code could spook these tech giants enough to strip part of their product from millions of users? Let’s take a look.
  First released in July last year, the code is an attempt to fix a purported imbalance in bargaining power between Australian companies that produce news and digital platforms that host news content, particularly Google and Facebook, which will be the first tech companies to be bound by the code. It empowers news companies to negotiate with tech companies for payment in return for the right to host their news stories. The premise is that platforms like Google and Facebook profit from the ability to show you news articles in your Google searches and Facebook feed. This is done through the data they get from you, or the money they get by showing you ads – and the companies creating that news aren’t getting their cut.
  How true these premises are is debatable, to say the least, but setting that aside for the moment, let’s see what the code entails.
  The ACCC frames it as a solution that encourages news companies and digital platforms to negotiate in good faith, with minimal government intervention. However, the code includes a failsafe if news companies don’t like the outcome of their negotiations – if negotiations don’t end after three months, they’re allowed to initiate an arbitration stage.
  At that point, the code calls for an uncommon form of arbitration, which the ACCC calls ‘final offer arbitration’, and Google disparagingly calls ‘baseball arbitration’. (Why they think a reference to baseball would be effective in Australia is beyond me)
  Once arbitration is triggered, both parties submit a ‘final offer’ – a sum of money that the digital platform will pay for the news company’s content for the next two years. An arbitrator, appointed by a government body, gets to choose the offer they consider more reasonable, and that offer becomes enforced by law.
  Google has strongly rejected this mode of arbitration. In a blog post from September 2020, Silva argues that final-offer arbitration doesn’t work when the value of the ‘product’ being provided by one party to another is in dispute. To Silva, the value that Google derives from news companies has been exaggerated. According to her, Google only makes about $10 million a year in revenue from Google searches for news articles.
  But Australia’s largest news companies have different ideas. Nine Entertainment (which merged with Fairfax Media in 2018 – remember them?) thinks Google and Facebook should pay out 10 percent of their Australian revenue to news companies – a cool $600 million per year. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp thinks that figure should be closer to $1 billion.
  The ACCC claims that the drastic nature of final-offer arbitration would incentivise parties to reach an agreement without arbitration. But, considering that the code would give news companies the right to initiate arbitration without the digital platform’s consent, it appears that news companies have everything to gain and digital platforms have everything to lose. So it makes sense that Google and Facebook would be willing to go as far as to restrict access to their platforms in Australia.
  While Facebook has actually carried out that threat, Google is pushing their own alternative to the ACCC code – a new initiative called Google News Showcase. The premise of Showcase – which launched in Australia early this month – is that Google will pay news outlets monthly fees to curate ‘story panels’. If you use Google News (let’s not kid ourselves – I didn’t know it existed until I had to download it to research this story), you can tap on ‘Newsstand’ to check them out.
  Worldwide, Google is investing $1 billion USD ($1.3 billion AUD) into Showcase, which has launched in countries such as the UK, Canada, and Japan. It’s not clear how much Google is planning to pay Australian outlets, but obviously it’s a lot less than Murdoch thinks it should.
  Google seems to think it’s a fairer deal. And, yes, there’s reason to agree the ACCC code is poorly-conceived. As former prime minister Kevin Rudd put it, “I always get a bit suspicious when the Murdoch media get really excited about something.” But an initiative that’s proprietary to Google – which it could cancel at any time (Remember Google Glass?) – is not an appropriate substitute for a legally binding code that compels tech companies like Google to pay their fair share (Google pays a paltry amount of tax in Australia compared to its revenue). Keep in mind that Showcase exists in countries other than Australia – it’s a business venture that benefits Google, which it would probably be running in Australia even if no code had been proposed.
  Despite this, Nine  and News Corp  have signed on to News Showcase – the former for a $30 million per year payment, the latter for an undisclosed amount.
  We’re not going to stop hearing about the code – it is likely to become law, as it has Labor’s support – but hopefully the saga is a bit clearer now. At least we can be sure of getting news from Google for now, even if we’re not going to get it from Facebook.
   

  Andy Yin

• AR and Language learning

  June 17, 2019 5:23 pm Comments Off on AR and Language learning

  I have been trying to learn Mandarin since 2015, and Japanese for much longer than that. Consequently, I’ve spent a long time thinking about how various tools could aid my language-learning. It occurred to me while watching a gorgeous dog play with its owners on a beach in Batemans Bay that, in a world where everybody speaks different languages, to be able to tell anyone, in real time, about your dog would be incredible. What’s its name? What does it like to eat? Are there any plants nearby that are toxic to it? What’s that insect wandering around in the vicinity of your dog, and does it pose any lethal danger to your pet?
  Dogs, insects, plants, beaches. What the hell do these everyday objects have to do with language-learning? I say everything
  The current situation of language-learning is that it is so disconnected from anything that is occurring in real life. So, when people learn a second language it often feels as if they are doing this simply to show off their brilliance in memorising long lists of seemingly irrelevant gobbledygook that someone from the relevant foreign country may or may not understand. If you’re lucky, you might get language exposure if you happen to point at a native speaker (who probably also wants to learn English from you) and get them to explain something in your shared environment in their own language. Through many years of trial and tribulation, you’ll likely get good enough at a language to be self-sufficient. However, you will never get the intimate one-on-one teaching of the most basic and fundamental aspects of a language that you got from your parents or caregivers
  when you were growing up. Otherwise, if you’re really committed to learning a language, you will simply end up investing endless hours to begin a long and painfully boring career in translation. You learn all those words for what? To transfer them to another, different set of words?
  Typically, language-learning is best done in childhood when there is an adult figure who can teach the child everything: from what the colours of the rainbow are to the shared social conventions of the shared language environment. Once the child reaches adulthood, there are many social barriers (such as the amount of time one is required to spend working in a job versus obtaining knowledge) which prevent a person from learning a new language in quite the same way. Consequently, less time can be invested in making sure that learners of a second language have the same immersive learning experiences that they had when introduced to their mother tongue. They have gone through the arduous process of first language acquisition, but their mother tongue becomes their cage. In particular, English acquisition is a gilded cage because of all the opportunities it offers, along with the limitations it has and Anglo-centric assumptions it forces us to make about the rest of the world.
  Upon understanding this, my interest in augmented reality (AR) was ignited: use AR to teach language!
  Since the rise of ‘Pokemon Go’, smartphone app developers have been scrambling to get on the AR-wave. But a quick search on the Android app store reveals only a few haphazard titles of truly underwhelming programs which merely superimpose various objects on the camera. The trouble with smartphones is they do not have big enough screens to incorporate many buttons or functions and they have limited battery lives for a constantly active internal camera. It would pretty awesome to have a ‘Pokemon Go’ for language learning, but if you were to go around tagging things in the hopes of teaching people words, in reality the best way to describe the situation would be: Confusion.
  If people don’t know coding there’s no way that they can use a smartphone to teach non-English speakers wanting to learn physics that that round 3D object is called an ‘orange’ and that if you drop it on particular surfaces, it may roll, splatter, or be sliced in half depending on the situation that it finds itself in.
  So, this is where I started looking into AR headsets.
  Currently, the potential applications for AR headsets are huge. Language teachers can make language learning programmes using spatial learning without the need for expensive props. Mechanics can fix your car without having to consult a thick engineering manual. You can follow along with personal trainers in real time doing exercises no matter where you are in the world. Remember in Star Wars where Princess Leia was sending a message as a holographic image? That will be possible too. All you need to do is model a 3D-image with your hands, upload the file to your programme and attach information to that file.
  Language learning companies such as Mondly are already beginning to take advantage of AR technology. Students using Mondly can interact with a virtual reality language instructor in real time to practice travel and daily life phrases in another language. However, since it is a smartphone app, it requires a lot of coding to create the graphics and artificial intelligence, and it removes the human component of interacting with a real person in another language. It teaches you that automated ‘service talk’ used in cafes and hotels. But is it an authentic experience? Does it encourage creativity and experimentation? Adventure and discovery? No, but these are improvements that current AR-research is beginning to address.
  With apps like ‘italki’ (an app for tutors and students) and ‘LingQ’ (an app for micro-translating and creating audio versions of documents) adopting this kind of technology, you could do things like book real time language classes with students from around the world without worrying about learning props. Or you could facilitate users to look up words in any foreign language document they come across in normal life, be it a street sign or an instruction manual. Some apps such as ‘Drops’ focus on teaching concrete nouns as well as some abstract nouns and verbs, but with AR you could assign any object in real life with nouns to be learned, and go a step further by making videos of interactions between objects and verbs in other languages. A cooking lesson in French would no longer have to be translated into English to get a broader ‘reach’, it could be made understandable to anyone, regardless of what languages they know.
  One day, when augmented reality headsets are more mainstream, adventure and discovery will be possible in every aspect of learning. We can take everything we love about the virtual world and place it back in the real world where it belongs.
  The main argument against AR is that there is scope for people to delude themselves into a false reality. Additionally, people could trick themselves or others into thinking something is there when it isn’t or vice versa, resulting in injuries from falling in holes or hitting objects you can’t see due to an augmented obstruction. According to Meron Gribetz, co-founder and CEO of Metavision, augmented reality should not deceive users about the nature of reality, but simply add to it in a way that does not cause harm. For instance, with Pokemon Go, users are not deluded into thinking that the Pokemon they are interacting with are real. As long as users of an AR app are aware of what is real and what is not, there should be minimal problems.
  Another challenge for AR is that computers still do not have the capacity to understand natural human language and they still rely on tools like barcodes and QR codes to identify things. However, if one were to create an online, crowdsourced platform using information generated by paying users (like many platforms now such as LingQ), communities made up of people who own AR headsets will naturally develop.
  As with many emerging technologies, there will be implications for public safety, policy, and law which will need to be given careful consideration. But in many ways, I feel that a world with AR headsets would be an exciting place to live.
  Zena Mason is a postgraduate student at ANU just about to begin a degree in linguistics. She has a special interest in language acquisition.

  One day, when augmented reality headsets are more mainstream, adventure and discovery will be possible in every aspect of learning. We can take everything we love about the virtual world and place it back in the real world where it belongs.

  Zena Mason

• Artificial Intelligence: the future face of businesses

  October 4, 2018 11:10 am Comments Off on Artificial Intelligence: the future face of businesses

  Today’s world is dominated by technology. Whether it be at work or home, or even when you are walking on the streets – technology is everywhere, and we can’t live without it. Every day there are discoveries and new products created to make human life easier and more comfortable – as if we are employing ‘human robots’ – intelligent machines – to complete human tasks. There is a huge technological disruption in today’s modern society. While some inventions seem to be revolutionary in a positive sense, others force us to recalculate what is primarily meant to be human.
  As the wind of technical disruption blows through human society, companies are inventing new ways of creating automation in business processes. One of such discovery is ‘Artificial Intelligence’: intelligent machines that perform complex tasks like a human. Although not a new concept, AI is yet to show its true power in the form of accessible products services. Companies are trying to create new products that use AI to transform our lives into a bed of ease and comfort. AI is currently the critical element to have in mind when creating new digital inventions. It incorporates several new innovative and problematic technologies, such as machine learning, cognitive and computer vision, conversational capabilities, human-to-machine user interfaces, predictive data analytics, cyber security, Internet of things (IoT) and intelligent monitoring.
  Businesses that have successfully integrated AI into their enterprise systems have increased their operational efficiency, allowing them to make faster, better informed decisions about innovating products and services for the general public. For effective and successful integration of AI into marketable products, organisations need clear AI strategy, support from existing business processes and a specific set of metrics. In the future, AI will transform the business environment to create more jobs than today. AI will help us to develop new products that could be used in our everyday life, achieve cost-efficiency due to streamlining business processes, accelerate decision-making and expand the scope of business and machine automation.
  With the proliferation of data in today’s world, AI is mainly used to analyse these massive data to predict a specific outcome. It is integrated primarily with the production of new software, which is widely used in the healthcare, mobility and financial industries. Over the next decade, it is predicted AI enterprise software revenue will grow from $644 million to nearly $39 billion. AI will transform the nature of the business processes in the distant future and will help in the creation of a technology-dominated society with business automation.

  Soumyadeep Sengupta

• Third Wheel Not Doing Himself Any Favours by Tagging Couple Friends in Memes

  May 16, 2018 10:25 am Comments Off on Third Wheel Not Doing Himself Any Favours by Tagging Couple Friends in Memes

  A recent article published in J. Appl. Psychol. has found that single friends who tag couple friends in memes do not have a higher chance of attracting a mate than those who do not. This finding came to light as Bachelor Johnno tagged his couple friends, Alice and Derek, in the fourth Spongebob meme of the week.
  “We love Johnno, don’t get us wrong, but meme- tagging is a sacred act amongst young couples,” tells Alice, who met Derek at a Burgmann/B&G mixer two years ago. The pair are reported to have hit it off almost immediately and basically became official when Derek tagged Alice in a Jerry of the Day video. Johnno was one of the first to pick up on Alice and Derek’s mutual interest in each other after he noticed that the two were both of affluent, Northern Sydney heritage and were avid members of the ANU Snow Sports Club.
  “I’ve known Alice since first year. We met in PPE society, and I used to pester Derek for 1013 web assignment answers” recalls Johnno, a 25- year old undergrad currently on his second degree switch.  “They’re my best friends and I like to share in their happiness by including them in various Facebook shitposts,” he added.
  Alice and Derek see things differently, however. “I missed out on tagging Alice in a spicy meme last month because Johnno got to it first. I appreciate the effort, but I think he needs to start focusing on himself. Last I checked, his Tinder age setting was 18-30 with a range of 35km,” comments Derek.
  “We just want him to be happy, but also not mooch off our gross, borderline-toxic mutual dependency,” Alice added. “Maybe he should try Bumble? That’s what single peasants use now when they want to ascend, right? They use Bumble?”

  James Hamilton

• Students Report Clearer Complexions, Shinier Hair and Better Sleep Patterns After Leaving ANU Schmidtposting

  April 18, 2018 2:47 pm Comments Off on Students Report Clearer Complexions, Shinier Hair and Better Sleep Patterns After Leaving ANU Schmidtposting

  Students today have an impressive assortment of lifestyle fads to choose from. This helps to distract them from the fact that they have dropped tens of thousands of dollars on ‘hopefully’ getting a grad job and that they can’t even afford a down payment on an outer-city carpark. One of these trendy coping mechanisms is called the paleo diet, for people who understand exactly nothing about science and are going to make sure everyone knows it. There’s also those people who go on regular juice cleanses and do yoga at 5am but also like to take unidentifiable pills at festivals and go blind for three hours. And now, a hip new underground movement is taking hold at our university: cutting Schmidtposting out of one’s life completely.
  Schmidtposting, for the uninitiated, is a Facebook group which is really beyond definition. Some might say that it is the personal diary of that guy in your Politics tute who has a tragic inability to say anything without the preface ‘allow me to play devil’s advocate’. Others would claim that it was a page originally designed to monitor the movements of parking inspectors, until it went horribly, horribly wrong. One undeniable truth of Schmidtposting is that it is an integral part of ANU life. For this reason, the decision to leave it might sound shocking. Schmidtposting, many would argue, is a biological need. Where would we all be if we couldn’t count on the guarantee that someone, somewhere, was going to post a link to an article titled ‘Genocide: is it that Bad?’ on the very day that exams start?
  However, new evidence suggests that staying up until 2am, throwing insults which you would never have the courage to say in real life, is not a very healthy thing to do. Recent studies have shown that students who did manage to abstain from Schmidtposting felt ‘cleaner’, ‘less empty inside’ and that ‘maybe the baby boomers are wrong about us after all’. There were also reports of bouncier hair, better grades and whiter smiles.
  The scientific reasons behind the general improvement of those people who left Schmidtposting are yet to be identified. Several theories have been raised. Maybe the time spent laboriously researching a topic to prove someone on the internet wrong would be better spent researching for actual assignments. It is even possible that your lecturer is saying something important as you ignore them completely and instead focus on editing the perfect spicy possums-are-actually-cats meme. The sad reality is that we will likely never fully understand this phenomenon. However, if you’re physically incapable of giving up caffeine, can’t afford any mason jars to carry your weird green health concoctions around in, and are unable to go to the gym because it’s a really long walk to get there, consider going Schmidtposting-free. Your body will LOVE you for it!

  Caroline Dry

• Data Mined and Fined: Who Are the Real Losers?

  April 17, 2018 2:47 pm Comments Off on Data Mined and Fined: Who Are the Real Losers?

  The Cambridge Analytica scandal has saturated news in recent weeks. Just in case you’ve been living as a recluse, Cambridge Analytica is a British consulting and data mining company who recently made headlines for using the data of 50 million Facebook users to influence elections. Most notably, Cambridge Analytica was hired by the Trump campaign during the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit side during the 2016 UK referendum. They’re basically the bad guys making sure the worst possible outcome happens in every election, they might also be behind the break up of the Spice Girls (rumoured but unconfirmed).
  So how did Cambridge Analytica become the Cruella De Vil of data?
  Well, they were not actually doing anything wrong; they saw an opportunity to manipulate Facebook’s privacy regulations for their benefit and went with it. Through Facebook’s regulations, Cambridge Analytica was able to procure user data from a third party app. It may be logical that people who use this app by logging into Facebook assume their data may be used by that app for other means. As nowadays even grocery stores monitor what customers purchase and suggest specific items that may be desirable or on sale, it has become rather commonplace for our data to be used for purposes other than we initially intended.
  In most cases, we, as consumers, find these occurrences quite useful – especially when advertisements are specifically directed. So, how is Cambridge Analytica using data for targeted advertising any different? A major issue arises when we consider how Cambridge Analytica got a hold of 50 million user profiles; while the app they used to procure the data only had 200, 000 users, Facebook’s regulations allowed the mining of not only those 200, 000 users but also their Facebook friends. While those 200, 000 users may have fathomed that their data would be used in some other way by the app, the Facebook friends who had their data mined certainly did not consent to it. When there is a player like Cambridge Analytica who is disrupting democratic systems through targeted and manipulative marketing techniques, one has to question whether their data is not only being used without consent, but further to bend their free will.
  The solution seems simple; get rid of Facebook, delete the data and that way no nefarious Cambridge characters will be able to manipulate you. In reality, detaching from a social media platform like Facebook is much harder. Most millennials grew up with Facebook; it is used not only as a networking tool, but also as an archiving system of sorts. As such, removing a digital history cultivated through Facebook is not an appealing thought for many. In hooking users from a young age, Facebook ensures that consumers continue to use their product, no matter how they seek to use us. Although Facebook is a free platform, by opening data to advertisers users have become commodities without informed consent. While users can read through privacy policies, they are often not entirely accessible; one really has to delve into Facebook and its respective apps to understand how their data is being used. Moreover, for people who have grown up using Facebook, one might not think to compare the initial privacy policy from the time they joined with policies that might have been modified thousands of times by now.
  Facebook seems an altruistic player in the scandal, having exposed Cambridge Analytica once they discovered they had failed to delete the user data, but can we really trust a company that has stretched the lines of consent and thrived off the commodification of its consumers? 

  Kanika Kirpalani

• ANU Students Take On The World Solar Challenge

  September 20, 2017 3:25 am Comments Off on ANU Students Take On The World Solar Challenge

  A project that started as a pipe dream of three ANU engineering students in 2013, has now turned into more than 30 students working together to grow an extremely complex start-up. The team has spent hours working hard on all aspects of the project – from business, engineering and design – to build something that will change the future of solar-powered vehicles.
  Over the past few months, students have worked against the clock in the workshop to put together a car to race over 3000km from Darwin to Adelaide. Technical team leader Nathan Coleman recalls the time he and two of his mates conjured up the idea of making a solar car: ‘I was procrastinating, as usual, when I came across the Bridgestone World Solar Car Challenge website. We all wanted a chance to do something hands on.’ He is immensely proud of his team and grateful to all the students who volunteered their time. Business team lead Mark McAnulty says it is undoubtedly the largest ANU student-led project ever and certainly one of the most exciting projects at the ANU.
  The vehicle will take part in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge that officially runs from 8-15 October 2017. From Canberra, the race team will be transporting the car to Darwin where they will undertake safety checks and prepare themselves for the long journey. ‘The car will be competing in the Challenger Class, up against some of the fastest solar cars in the world. The ANU is certainly an underdog as some teams get millions of dollars to build their car. However, we have put together something that is competitive and will get through the tough conditions,’ says Arlene Mendoza, Race team lead.
  Students in the team will be away from the university for almost a month. ‘It is a huge time commitment, but it is also a once in a lifetime opportunity to be involved in this race. We have been dedicated to the project for the past 18 months, and this is the final push,’ says Arlene.
  But the car’s journey does not end after it reaches Adelaide. The team is organising a tour of regional towns surrounding the ACT after the race. ‘We want to inspire regional high school students and show them what they can contribute to if they come to ANU to study’, Emily Rose Rees, team leader, explains. ‘Our sponsors have been instrumental in the process. It has been so encouraging to have genuinely interested and engaged sponsors.’
  The team will live stream parts of the race via Facebook and will post regular updates on Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Follow the team on social media by searching MTAA Super Solar Invictus to stay up to date throughout the race and find out if this new team can take out the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.

  Monika Berlot

• Literally The End of The World

  3:13 am Comments Off on Literally The End of The World

  Imagine you’re forced to play a game of Russian roulette. Someone loads a bullet into a revolver, spins the barrel, aims it at you, and pulls the trigger. There are, say, six chambers, so you’ve got a one in six chance of dying. Sure, you’ll probably be fine. But that’s not much comfort – you’d still be very worried, you’d still not want to play, and you’d still go to great lengths not to.
  What if the stakes are higher? What if, somehow, it’s not just you on the firing line – what if your family, your friends, and everyone you love will be lost too? And what if, worse still, everyone alive today was at risk? What if there was a one in six chance that all 7.5 billion people on Earth – people with complex lives, each of whom experience joy and love and happiness, and who don’t want to die any more than you and your loved ones – had a one in six chance of being wiped out in this game of Russian roulette? That would be even worse – that would be catastrophic. That would be worth doing almost anything to prevent or to even just reduce the risk.
  In 2006, the UK government’s Stern Review put the risk of human extinction this century at 9.5 per cent. A 2008 survey of experts by the University of Oxford found that the probability was 19 per cent (a bit more than one in six). And even higher estimates exist – Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, puts it at 50 per cent. So there it is – we’re in that game of Russian roulette, whether we like it or not. Between now and 2100, there’s roughly a one in six chance of absolute catastrophe – involving not just our deaths, but those of our friends, our loved ones, and of 7.5 billion other people. And, under most extinction scenarios, almost all animal and plant life would be lost as well.
  How will it most likely happen?
  Where is this risk coming from? Fortunately, researchers at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and elsewhere, have started looking into the possible causes of human extinction.
  One major risk is nuclear war. It would only take roughly one hundred nuclear detonations distributed across the globe to potentially trigger a disastrous nuclear winter. This could sharply reduce global temperatures and cripple agriculture, such that humanity could not produce sufficient food for survival. This isn’t going to result from a nuclear exchange between the United States and North Korea (the latter simply doesn’t have a large enough nuclear arsenal), but a future conflict between any two of Russia, China, and the United States could do it. Experts put the risk of such a conflict (or accident) happening by 2100, and the result of complete extinction at one per cent. That might seem low but combined with other risks; it adds up. And with what’s at stake, one per cent is still a lot.
  Global pandemics are an even greater risk with a roughly two per cent chance of wiping us out by 2100. Naturally occurring diseases likely couldn’t do it (since evolution doesn’t favour a disease that wipes out all of its possible hosts), but it’s getting easier and easier to modify diseases in the lab to be more lethal. With synthetic biology developing so rapidly, producing a civilisation-ending virus could become so easy that even your average terrorist organisation could do it. And it might not even require the deliberate release of such a bioweapon: laboratory safety practices are not as good as you’d expect and, with so many labs around the world doing this sort of work, the chance of a leak gets quite high. It’s even happened before, albeit on a smaller scale. In 1979, anthrax spores were accidentally released from a lab near the city of Sverdlovsk, killing about 100 people. The next time this happens, it could easily be something much worse.
  Climate change might also do it. We’re still not certain about the precise consequences of carbon emissions, and the International Panel on Climate Change estimates that, under a medium-level emissions scenario, there’s a 10 per cent chance that we’ll exceed six degrees of warming. Looking further up the scale, economist Martin Weitzman has found that we may have almost a one per cent chance of exceeding 10 degrees of warming, averaged across the Earth’s surface. This equates to more than 20 degrees of warming across Europe, and most of the Earth’s landmass becoming uninhabitable. If we don’t drastically reduce emissions, there’s almost a one per cent chance of this, and a good chance that we won’t survive. Again, this doesn’t sound high (it’s even lower than for nuclear war), but it all adds up.
  It’s also highly likely that we invent some new, immensely dangerous technology over the next 80 years. We simply don’t know – prior to 1945, few people predicted the future destructiveness of weapons technology, and we could easily be in a similar position. In fact, it would be surprising if technology didn’t develop to an unrecognisable level by 2100. It might not result in what we see in science fiction, with the Earth being destroyed by Terminators, but something like geoengineering or nanotechnology could plausibly go very, very badly. Without foresight, safeguards, and solutions to the technical problems, unknown technologies like those could potentially be the end of us – the Oxford survey put the chances of this at almost 10 per cent.
  The importance of preventing extinction
  That’s all pretty worrying. But there’s something which makes extinction events like these even more worrying.
  If humanity goes extinct, there’s no coming back. Yes, we’re in a game of Russian roulette with 7.5 billion present lives on the line, but that’s not all that’s at stake. If humanity goes extinct, our children, grandchildren, and every single future generation will be lost too. If we go, our entire future goes too. How many people is that? Ten thousand trillion. That’s the low estimate, assuming we never leave Earth. And it’s still a million times more people than are alive right now. This game of Russian roulette is bigger than one person, and bigger than every person alive today – more than a million times bigger.
  That’s what makes this issue so important. Sure, there are other things that might make our future unpleasant – overpopulation, food shortages, moderate climate change, and so on – and of course we should prevent them. But these will either affect just one or two generations or merely decrease quality of life. If nuclear war wipes us out, it extinguishes a million times more lives. The effect is on vastly greater scale, and it is worth doing something about.
  Doing something about it
  But there’s good news – by addressing these risks, we can safeguard our future. And ANU is starting to take action on this. In June of this year, the Emeritus Faculty convened a roundtable discussion and, in late July, published a report on the topic – Pathways Past the Precipice: Flourishing in a Mega-Threatened World (featured on the VC’s blog). They proposed the development of cross-disciplinary research centres to improve understanding of these risks, an ‘Australian Future Change Commission’ to take broader action, and that such issues be included in university curricula.
  This is all great news. For one, as a world-leading research university, we’ve got a great comparative advantage in furthering research into these topics. At the moment, there’s less research into human extinction than there is on dung beetles, or on analysing Star Trek (yes, really). And, from what we know so far, research here is so crucial since much of the risk comes from the unknown; much of it could potentially be dealt with through technical solutions, and we still need to find the most effective strategies for achieving global coordination to address these threats. By supporting new research targeted specifically at this issue, ANU could really contribute here.
  With parliament house a stone’s throw away, we’re also in a great position to make a real difference to policy. In particular, we’re well placed to establish a national commission which maintains a strong academic foundation, informed by the very latest research and free to focus on the crucial issue our long-term survival – an issue which is just not on the radar of policy-makers.
  There’s a major worry with any such initiative, however. It’s very easy to get distracted from the central issue. There are other problems which might affect humanity in the near future (moderate climate change, overpopulation, food shortages, etc.) and possibly even make life a lot worse for a generation or two. But existential threats are so much worse – they affect not just one generation but every generation that will ever live. Plus, they’re hugely neglected – little government effort goes into pandemic prevention or regulating technologies which haven’t even been invented yet. Meanwhile, globally, US$360 billion already goes towards combating climate change each year, and overpopulation and the rest have already gotten the attention of policy-makers too. Of course, these are worth dealing with but, with such resources going into them already (and failing to solve the problem), additional efforts likely won’t have a large impact. For genuine extinction risks, however, the lack of attention means that there are lots of low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. Additional work here could have an enormous impact, and ANU could make it happen.
  Despite this possible pitfall, the ANU initiative could go extremely well. And there’s no need to be pessimistic – although there is a risk of the greatest catastrophe in human history, there’s also an opportunity here to do an enormous amount of good. We can dial back the risk and, in this game of Russian roulette, make the chance of disaster a bit lower than one in six – perhaps by pushing for nuclear non-proliferation, for better lab safety rules, or for safeguards on emerging technologies. And if we do, there’s a chance we’re saving thousands of trillions of lives. We can save the world, one percentage point at a time.

  Hayden Wilkinson

• How Machine Learning Will Predict Your Next Moves

  September 2, 2017 7:06 pm Comments Off on How Machine Learning Will Predict Your Next Moves

  If you’ve been browsing the internet lately, you’ve undoubtedly heard of machine learning being used in just about everything. You may frequently hear that we live in the age of information and may have even heard of ‘Big Data’. But what does all this mean and what are the ramifications for the world as we see it?
  Essentially, this buzz term which shapes the modern corporate landscape refers to the fact that companies have an excess of data; so much so, that these companies are at odds with how they can interpret data and don’t know what to do with it. Data is a pretty powerful thing, which has a lot of untapped potential. Some businesses just sit on that data and do a few rudimentary statistical analyses to make internal business decisions.
  But think of the possibilities if we were able to exploit this data. Imagine if a company was able to search through anything consumers had ever publically stated about their product on the internet. This potential use of big data has tremendous corollaries for the marketing and advertising sector as a whole.  This process is known as sentiment analysis, where a machine tries to deduce how humans feel about something through their writing. For a company, this is also invaluable market research, which can be put back into their products/service, to better serve key demographics by improving products based on reviews. Financial traders also sometimes use sentiment analysis to detect fluctuations in stock prices by using the changes in sentiment as indicators of stock value. Sometimes sentiment well before a stock does, which might be profitable.
  However, why does this matter to the average person? You might think that only large corporations, multi-million dollar hedge funds and traders benefit from this application of machine learning. But, in fact, this is also to the average person’s advantage.
  Perhaps the only limiting factor to this data-fuelled future is the type of information companies have at their disposal. People don’t like having their private information explicitly taken. There are also legal issues about acquiring information from users, related to privacy. Questions such as to what extent companies can take personal information and use it for their benefit rise. Where do privacy and the right to autonomy step in to ensure that we don’t have a Big Brother-esque situation meet?
  For example, if McDonald’s decided to predict the next drive through order, by recording data such as your number plate with your Big Mac order, you can bet there would be hues and cries about privacy and right to personal information. Even more problematic, is the potential for identity crimes as possible extensions of this technology can recognise and store facial recognition data to make decisions about you.
  It is clear that corporations are staying well away from the use of intimate information, at least at the current time, and only use publicly accessible information to profile you. This sort of thing is constantly happening, evident through the levels of Big Data which we have in this age. You may have already noticed this happening on your Facebook news feed, specifically showing ads, which are creepily specific to what you’ve recently been speaking about or searching. The bigger your data, the more you can learn about anyone.  This is the world that dystopic science fiction writers feared and the adoption of machine learning, albeit less morbid, poses interesting questions for the future.
  A more realistic future lies in this carefully thought out balance.
  There’s one main suggestion I would make to students in the age of machine learning: learn to code. This trend will continue and become increasingly relevant in all facets of society, particularly in marketing and business operations. The possibilities of data analytics are endless and particularly exciting to keep track of.

  Rohit Ram