By Apoorva Khandelwal
Did you know about the trends this year that are harmful? There are several dangerous technology trends this year and we have to know about them. We spend several hours a day looking at a screen, but do we know the real danger of looking at a screen. I personally spend at the very most 4 hours on my phone daily, and about 5 more hours on my laptop. Yep, that's a lot. Now think about how many hours you spend daily using a device. It's more likely going to be spending most of your day on it. A recent report by Common Sense Media states that teenagers spend a daily average screen time of 7 hours and 22 minutes on, while tweens (8-12) spend 4 hours and 44 minutes daily. But since you are using technology everyday are you informed about the trends?
The first one is Spying Smart Home Devices. These home devices are pretty popular. They include Google Home, Alexa, Echo, and etc. Let’s take Echo for an example. When you use Echo as a radio or an alarm clock, it is connected to the internet. When you connect it to the Internet, you are letting it see your laptop history, how much you used the device, your home address and the route to it. Sometimes the device (Echo) could abuse your personal information. Be careful when using your Smart Home Device because it is listening and spying on you. I personally don’ t have any of these devices for this reason.
Another one is facial recognition. I understand that it is very useful, but it can also be used for threatening purposes. When I would have messy hands while eating but needed to use my phone, I had facial recognition. China recently is accused for racial profiling and facial recognizition technology for surveillance. Cameras in Russia scan for “people of interest,” according to Bernard Marr, a technology enterprise.
AI Cloning is an extra problem. To make a cloned audio, you only need a snippet of somebody’s voice. Similarly to that, you need a few photos and videos to create a cloned video which looks realistic but isn’t. This is super harmful because the results can be so realistic that you wouldn’t know the difference between real and fake. This is especially worse for celebrities due to them having several videos and photos of them online which makes it easy to clone.
One last trend I am going to inform you about is Fake News Bot. There are several fake news online, but GROVER is one AI system capable of that. GROVER’s system makes articles better and more persuasive than ones done by humans. When these articles are shared to be true but are fake news, rumors spill and cause issues for companies, government, and people.
In a world where everything is technology based, it is important to stay safe. You have to be careful about devices spying on you, cloning, fake news, and much much more. Staying safe is one of the easiest things to do. Have you heard about any other trends that need to be addressed?
References:
ABC News, ABC News Network, abcnews.go.com/US/teens-spend-hours-screens-entertainment-day-report/story?id=66607555.
Marr, Bernard. “The 7 Most Dangerous Technology Trends In 2020 Everyone Should Know About.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 23 Sept. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/09/23/the-7-most-dangerous-technology-trends-in-2020-everyone-should-know-about/.
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