117 (45.7%) of the 246 were juniors

87 (34%) of the 246 were seniors

50 (19.5%) of the 246 were freshman

2 (0.8%) of the 246 were sophomores

7NEWS.indd 3 1/30/23 9:52 AM

Students stress implications surrounding phone location tracking

Eliana Grant | Reporter

People go through their days, years, and entire lives using one of humanity’s greatest tracking devices. A device so popular to humans worldwide that according to the Pew Research Center, 97% of Americans have one as of 2021. This item is the cell phone, a small handy gadget most have in their pocket at just about all times.

So what makes the cell phone so invasive? Well for one, according to a New York Times article by Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel from 2019, it is completely legal to sell and collect data on customers, often tracking customers’ location throughout their day. This can possibly give much of your personal information to both large tech corporations and the government, with only some company policies and personal human morality to stop employees using their access to that data for malicious actions.

“I was traveling from Texas to Colorado where I used to live,” junior Milo Lastinger said. “Whenever I got there it kept telling me that my old house was my current home … and it was really weird.”

The common main reason that phones collect data is to advertise better to its audience. As is pointed out in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, users are the products of their phones. People may have bought them, but with using social media and various apps, the goal of social media is to get users to buy products. However along with advertising off of seeing your current locations, or through your activities in apps, phones will often track your location oftentimes to what some users consider an excessive amount.

“When we were flying to Grand Nationals, I kept my phone on airplane mode the entire time, except for when we were at layovers, and I was checking Google Maps to see where we were because our flights had gotten changed,” sophomore Jackson Collins said. “So I looked at it and it had tracked our entire flight path without the location on, and I found [it] really unsettling and creepy”

But this isn’t purely something Collins has faced. According to a Pew Research Center study from 2019, 81% of American adults felt like they had a lack of control over what data companies collect from them, however 59% also claimed that they had little understanding of what companies do with that information. This contributes to the overall fear of how your phone may track your data and location, helping with Collins’ troubling phone tracking.

“When we got to the hotel after the second day it started telling me the hotel was home,” Collins said.

“I was like, ‘why? My home is not in Indianapolis?’ I don’t know it was just really creepy”

Yael Behar | Co-Editor

A click of a mouse is all that you need in order to generate a piece of art now. Or is it really ‘art.’ Artificial intelligence can search databases of images in the blink of an eye, and create a piece of ‘art’ with techniques that take humans years to build and develop. Critics of A.I. art say it isn’t really art - that art needs to be human made. Advocates of A.I. say that it is a feat of technological development, and a tool for education and the betterment of humankind. Its emerging controversy is evident in educational, and art occupational settings.

“When it comes to artificial intelligence, if it’s a job that’s dangerous, it helps where somebody doesn’t need to be put into this dangerous predicament, it could come into play and can be a really positive thing,” animation and video game design teacher Brian Westerfield said. “Being a video game teacher, I’m all for artificial intelligence in the video game to help make the video game more unique for the player.”

Whilst the development of A.I. in standard occupational settings is generally considered beneficial, the use of A.I. in creative settings is much more disputed. “If the AI is creating the artwork, who gets credit for the art?,” Westerfield said. “If the computer is the one creating it, where is the creative side? I don’t know if I would call it real art.”

Even though artificial intelligence has the capability to be used negatively in artistic settings, its worth noting it also has its benefits. It can easily generate concepts which can be utilized in tandem with human creativity, or used in other aspects of the art occupational industry.

“I think AI can be used if it’s used responsibly,” Westerfield said. “You could make some kind of artificial intelligence training programs for companies.”

Among creatives, the principal of A.I. art as ‘art’ is heavily disputed, but its applications in contemporary society alongside human creativity has the potential to increase efficiency in these fields, while simultaneously being a potential disservice.

“There was an Instagram trend floating around about a month ago, where people would upload their pictures that were generated, meant to look like original art,” audio visual production and graphic design teacher Ashley Sullivan said. “With something like that, I don’t know if [A.I.] could be a positive artistic thing. It could [be a way for the art industry to grow] but I still sort of view it as a trend. I do wonder if [A.I.] would be beneficial to the creators, but when something is just so quickly created like that, it takes away the willingness for anybody to learn how to create something on their own when something will do it so quickly for them.”

Even if procedurally generated art isn’t necessarily by the standards of artists, the progression of technology and A.I. in the future virtually secures a reality wherein tech will be used alongside art.

“If you look at why we put copyright in place back in the day, it was to keep everybody creative,” Westerfield said. “Now if you have a computer that’s doing all the creating, where’s the role for the human to be creative? I think when it comes to the creative side of things, we still need to keep the human side of things - letting us be creative.”