Category: Fall 2024

Fall 2024 Featured Weekly News Profile

Digital Doppelgangers: The Ethical Minefield of AI-Powered Digital Twins

Mo Jiang December 10, 2024

Microsoft’s Azure recently introduced AI-powered digital twins that can independently make medical decisions. The technology raises serious concerns over AI’s role in healthcare due to challenges in model confidence and real-time data integration. In healthcare, studies have shown that digital twins can improve cardiac surgery decisions, despite the risk of undermining clinicians’ judgment. Security challenges are significant and current counter-measures have flaws. The future of digital twins hinges on balancing innovation with regulation, ensuring they augment rather than replace medical expertise.

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Picture of Uranus
Fall 2024 Weekly News Profile

Uranus Isn’t Actually That Weird: New Research Suggests Potential for Life on the Distant Planet

Rachel Pak November 23, 2024

When Voyager 2 became the first and only mission to fly by Uranus in 1986, the data collected by the probe defined the way astronomers understood the ice giant for the next 40 years. However, a new study published suggests Voyager 2 just happened to zoom by the distant planet on a particularly weird day. These findings mean it might be easier for future missions to search for oceans beneath the surface of Uranus’ moons. This study reminds us that not only are we constantly making new discoveries, but that discoveries we considered facts are ever changing.

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Fall 2024 Featured Volume 7 Issue 3

War Games: How America’s Military-Entertainment Complex Spreads Propaganda Through Entertainment

Alex Tomkow November 11, 2024

Media depictions of military conflict are often deliberately fraught with government biases and disinformation. In the United States, Hollywood often works in collaboration with the Department of Defense. The result is entertainment that doubles as military propaganda. Additionally, evidence shows that the video game industry works closely with gun manufacturers. Activision-Blizzard’s Call of Duty franchise presents a strong case study of the close ties between the American military-industrial complex and entertainment, both in historical revisionist narratives and in coordination with the U.S. military during development. These factors are worth critical examination as the interests of the American people do not always align with those of the military and their political allies.

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Fall 2024 Featured Volume 7 Issue 3

Real or Fake? The Ethics of Deepfake Media

Cameron Gomez November 11, 2024

Deepfakes are a new form of AI that can simulate a person’s likeness and words using visual and audio media. The videos of Tom Cruise doing magic tricks that are surfacing on TikTok are prevalent examples of deepfakes; the actor has never posted such content on any of his official social media accounts and seems to be unaware of their existence. The possibilities in which deepfakes can be used are endless, as long as video and/or audio data of a subject can be obtained. This reveals ethical concerns surrounding the lack of regulation of deepfake technology. Engineers have a duty to address these concerns and improve the practices involved in deepfake research.

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Fall 2024 Featured Volume 7 Issue 3

Back to Our Roots: The Shift from Industrial Monoculture to Permaculture

James Hiemstra November 11, 2024

In the decades following the Green Revolution, industrial monoculture has quickly become the dominant model of agriculture in the United States. Despite its economic benefits and high crop yield, monocultures have diminished biodiversity and operate on massive amounts of agrochemical inputs, which have caused extensive ecological and human damage. In hopes of shifting agriculture to a greater moral standing, agro-ecological models have been formulated that incorporate ecosystem processes into farming. Agro-ecology has culminated in the practice of permaculture, which enables ecological regeneration while growing crops in a sustainable manner. Permaculture is in its early stages of development, and agricultural engineers must shift their efforts to improving its design and feasibility for widespread use.

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Image of roads (highways)
Fall 2024 Featured Volume 7 Issue 3

Developing the Road to Nowhere: Ethical Considerations of Highway Expansions

Karsyn Wendler November 11, 2024

Highway expansion has persisted across the last several decades in the United States. While these networks provide an important mode of transportation for people and cargo between major cities throughout the country, their expansion poses an ethical dilemma. The primary solution to bottleneck traffic congestion and prolonged commute times is to add extra lanes to existing highways; however, the relief is temporary, as their positive effects only last about five years. Further, highway expansion has been associated with unethical long-term effects that prove federal budgets should be investing in improving existing road infrastructure.

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Fall 2024 Featured Volume 7 Issue 3

Space Colonization and Why Humanity is Better Off Not Pursuing It

Nakul Malik November 11, 2024

Space colonization is an inevitable reality, with time as its only obstacle. While innovations in this direction are generally viewed as a positive advancement in humanity’s long-term future, crucial ethical concerns are often forgotten in common discourse. Before humanity makes further strides toward being an interplanetary species, the ethics of the ownership of land and resources in space, the fair allocation of resources, and the violation of any rights must be analyzed. If humanity insists upon moving forward with space colonization, numerous aspects must be reconsidered to ensure a morally proper and ethical operation.

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