TODAY IN TECH EZINE Fall 2021
Smartphone Breakdown Taking a closer look at phone’s features
The True Danger of AI
Exploring AI and its dangers
The Evolution of Computers
Observing the progress of computers
Let the Games Begin!
How video games and its code has changed over time
6
Table Of Contents
Hotline Bling
10
Phone Popularity
12
The Evolution of Computers
16
Autopsy of a Desktop
18 22 24 28
The True Danger of AI The History of Ai in the Media
Oh, how the Times Have Changed
Game Over the Ages
Letter From the Editors Dear Readers, This magazine aims to help you, the reader, in some of your technological journeys. Being more aware of these items will contribute to your grasp and familiarity with tech, and as technology advances and more parts of our lives involve computers and robotics, having a better understanding will only become more important. Within this issue, you will find stories about different brands of phones, parts of a computer, what AI really is, and the evolution of games. Each corresponding ASF will support the concept and give valuable information, from timelines to interesting surveys. We have interviewed a variety of people with different levels of expertise, including a phone repair shop manager, students of code, an author, and an engineer at Dell. Every source brings their experience to the table, allowing us to compare and formulate our stories. Take your time and enjoy this magazine! Hopefully, these features will assist you now and in the future, wherever that may take you. From Luke Tindall, Jackson Edwards, Grant Bell, and Travis Huynh
Luke Tindall
Jackson Edwards
Travis Huynh
Grant Bell
• Mathematic Professional • Student at LASA High School
• 5’5” • Casual Gamer
• Gamer • Programmer
• Programmer • Gamer
By Travis Huynh
Smartphone Breakdown Phone’s importance and comparing brands You wake up to an alarm from your smartphone. Groggily, you get up to grab it, lying in bed a bit longer to go through your social media. During the ride to school, you listen to music while playing games or scroll through your feed to pass time. Throughout the day, you check your notifications center, looking for something new. If you see a beautiful view, you snap a shot. Need to call someone? Ring them up. Phones bring a lot to our daily lives. DynaTAC 8000, made in 1983. It measures 13 inches in height and 1.75 lbs
From the DynaTAC 8000x(left) to the iPhone 13 Pro Max, mobile phones have come a
long way. Between the two of these phones, there is a 1.25 lb difference and the iPhone 13 Pro Max is half of DynaTAC’s height. Evolving in both software and hardware, smartphones will continue to innovate and improve. In the modern-day, there are many companies like Apple and Samsung to select our phones from. There are a variety of thoughts on these companies, with each having its advantages and disadvantages. Learning about these things will help you find the phone suited to your needs. Big accomplishments have
allowing people to sometimes forgo bringing or buying a separate camera. Other key factors include a reliable battery (and charger), speakers, Bluetooth, browser, and a store for downloads. Without some of these things, the device wouldn’t be able to provide as much to the user.
been made over the years, setting the foundation for future models and versions. These little additions and advancements are passed down from generation and improved upon. A phone like the iPhone 1 created a large impact on the industry, as it introduced the App Store and combined many applications into one. These contributions are building blocks, constructing the complex structure we have now and will further enhance. I interviewed Alexis Martin, the manager at uBreakiFix, a phone repair shop in Austin. Computers and phones are the same, “they all have a screen, they all have a CPU, they all have RAM, they all have hard drives. It’s just a different form factor” says Mr. Martin. Phones are becoming more powerful, with the only thing setting them being convenience.
The phone in our pockets today encompasses an abundance of qualities. One of the core functions is the ability to communicate with others. Whether it be calling or messaging, phones were designed to provide accessibility to contact people. Linda, a college student says, “I think phones are a great way to interact with other people, especially during the pandemic,” as the pandemic limits in-person interactions. Of course, smartphones have evolved from the basic communication device, bringing together many applications and abilities to create a more convenient and helpful version. The current models aim to have many additional core functions. “It’s better, way better, to have a nicer camera system built into the phone,” says Daniel Hadad, an NXP employee. Cameras are an important part of phones,
Innovative ideas are also being tried out, with the new foldable phone from Samsung. In more recent years, phones have been changing material, such as the glass back. Having glass makes the phone sleeker and improve wireless charging (compared to metal), but this brings durability issues. People often find themselves dropping their phones and having an easily breakable surface doesn’t pair well. Mr. Hadad works in his yard and needs his phone to be durable, supplementing it with a rugged case.
“I think phones are a great way to interact with other people, especially during the pandemic”
On the topic of durability, the new foldable phones may have trouble with this. Incorporating
The less popular phones were said to have lowerquality parts, such as LG or Motorola when compared to the mainstream names. This supports the fact that those phones tend to sell for a lower price as well. A deciding factor for many buyers is the price and the deals they come with. “I only get a new phone if there is a better deal or if it’s time,” said Linda Miller, a college student. Miller prioritizes hardware durability and aesthetics over operating systems. The other two sources said they prefer Android phones over the others, based on their own experience and many factors, such as the OS, price, and material. Android phones were described as customizable, modular, flexible (in terms of software), and advanced. “ Samsung and Google are a lot ahead of Apple,” says Mr. Martin as well as Mr. Hadad. Both sources see Android phones like Samsung and Google as more advanced than Apple, with Apple releasing the same features but later. So the Android has its advantages, being more advanced with coming
out with innovations and improvements, as well as flexibility with applications and customization, allowing for the implementation of bigger storage. But it doesn’t come without cons. Samsung tends to have “lower battery life, just because they’re so energy-oriented” explained Mr. Martin, as well as its phones being more fragile. Google phones are well connected with many Google applications such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Voice, etc. but they have manufacturing problems, as Alexis says, “We see here all the time in the shop, getting warranty claims through Google.” Apple also comes with its strengths, bringing its ecosystem into play. There are devices like the Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and MacBook that create a whole line of interconnected products often called the “Walled Garden”.
This could prove unappealing to some, Mr. Hadad said ”I didn’t want to get sucked into the whole Apple ecosystem.” Many, however, enjoy the other parts of the phones and Linda personally prefers the Apple products. “It’s a good selling point for me,” she says about the aesthetics of the devices. They also have signature features such as FaceTime, FaceID, and high app compatibility in the App Store. Apple’s disadvantages include their storage, especially being unable to add more external storage (iCloud is an online service). Apple is also said to have lower resolutions. In general, it is depicted as behind when it comes to new additions, releasing their version later. The phones also have glass on the back, leaving them vulnerable to damage. The sources were asked to describe their ideal phone,
Photos(Left to Right): Samsung Galaxy Z, Blondinrikard Fröberg
a fold in the screen will bring issues, increasing the risk for damage. Mr. Martin says, “there’s a lot of mechanisms that are expected from a piece of glass.” However, the design holds potential, allowing the phone to expand into near tablet size or shrink the phone for accessibility.
their desired features, or any improvements they would like to see. Alexis combined the strengths of many brands into one. “Google cameras or software, Samsung’s screen resolution quality, high refresh rate, and Apple’s app compatibility or optimization.” Mr. Hadad says he wants to see more durable material be used in phones, with most of them utilizing glass over metal, effectively bringing up the
price. Overall, when it comes to deciding which phones to buy, “it’s up to you to choose what takes priority,” says Alexis. Companies are able to stay competitive and relevant because of their strengths. This story covered the comparison of each brand, and phones’ evolution as well as their consequences. Whether it be because of aesthetics or deals, the choice is up to you to find
In the end, phones have had a huge impact on society, bringing many great benefits and conveniences, as well as negatives. All of the sources have said that phones are a part of our lives and will continue to be, but how will this affect us in the future? When we become reliant on phones,
what will happen when they fail? Many applications depend on wifi or data to connect, but when that goes down, we are rendered useless. Using phones as a means of gratification, we aim for more dopamine. Phonophobia is becoming a real thing, especially amongst children. It
“ I t ’s u p to you to choose what takes priorit y.”
what you are looking for in the device you use daily.
separates us from the social world. That is why striking a balance between these things is the most important factor for a lot of us. Making sure our interactions with the device aren’t addictive. Don’t lose your sense of reality, it might hurt later.
Popular Phones What phones are people using in LASA and the US? By: Travis Huynh
A survey was taken at our school in order to idenitify the most popular phone brand. Alongside this, the students were asked about time spent on their phone and highly vistited apps. The data collected from this survey and on the US is shown here.
LASA Alongside the previous graph, Apple is the most preferred phone, with 66.7% of the poll. Samsung comes in second, taking up 20%.
Apple - 80% Samsung - 12% Google - 1.3% LG - 1.3%
PHONE DISTRIBUTION IN THE US
2015 4.9 inches
Sources: techcrunch.com; counterpointresearch.com
2021 5.5 inches
The Evolution of Computers
How computers have changed since calculators
Y
You stare at your computer with bated breath. The clock strikes 23 hundred. The clock ticks closer to 24 hundred, midnight. 23:30, the seconds overflowing onto the minute ticking up one. Every second it ticks closer one by one until. 23:59, you’re in the final minute now holding your breath you watch the time strike midnight. But nothing happens. The day moves over to 2000 Jan. 1st 00:00:01. Perhaps some of you reading will recognise the year 2000 problem. Where many people
feared that because of the way computers addressed years, that 2000 would be indistinguishable from 1900 and cause computer systems around the world to fail. That never happened, but why was this even a problem in the first place? For as long as people have had computers they have tried to make them faster. In the late 1900s, data storage was expensive at 10$ a kilobyte if you were lucky. Now you can get 100Gb for 10$. Simply because there is money to be made when their computer is even just slightly
faster, people pushed the limits of what was possible. Moore’s law described this trend: “Where computing processing essentially doubled every year” says Brandon Allmon, an engineer at Dell. “[We’re] kind of hitting the end of that”, Allmon states. “[And] so that you have to keep coming up with new ways to do it and density on chip, different materials. So used to be silicon, now it’s a lot of copper, when you get down to that sizes, you’re actually bumping down into the size of the actual atoms being a problem” We know our ability to make
computers faster is waning, but what is the computer even doing that needs improving? Jonathan Mayor has an analogy. Mayor is a Field technical director at Cohesity, a information center that develops software to let users manage their data across multiple systems. When he was in college, he worked a side job selling computers . He devised an analogy that made computers easier for everyday people to understand. “And so you know, just like in a kitchen you’ve got various functions, the computer is very similar, and so the hard drive is the refrigerator because that’s where you put stuff just to kind of keep it or the pantry right. And then the countertop that’s where you’re actually working so that’s your memory. Because you’re taking things from storage and now you’re working with them, but when you actually want to cook it that’s actually that’s the stove right so that’s your processor, and so breaking it down into those components that made it way more reasonable, because they would come in there and saying they wanted to do whatever thing and like I need a big hard drive because I wanted to go fast like well you need a bigger counter so that’s memory, you know, or you know if you need more storage that’s the hard drive, so it helps them kind of put it into context”. What’s something you probably can’t go too long without with computers? Well you probably said the internet, and the internet is just computers sending data to each other. In fact nearly everything that’s wireless is networking, so how do we even
hook up many computers to make a network? According to Mayor, “networking is when you allow different computers to talk to each other, over distances. So it’s, it needs to be some sort of way to move all of that information to and from. And because it’s a lot of information, it has to be done in an organized fashion. And that’s what networking is because you have to be able to find the address of the computer you want to talk to, and the know the language of the computer you want to talk to and do that” But despite the difficulties of networking computers, the benefits it brings is well worth the pain. The ability for computers to share data creates a field of data management and sensor technology Just take asking your phone for nearby restaurants, “There’s a lot of stuff in the background, like we need actual data points and sort of foundational pieces, but then there’s a lot of processing that happens at, Where are you, Where are you going, what direction, what kind of food, you know those kinds of things” Mayor said. At a high level, Mayor says that
as this kind of evolved, you know, we started out with basically, effectively, it was a calculator, but through language called binary, we’ve been able to teach it to do other things. And that is, the evolution of it isn’t this now, of course, smartphones, and everything else in the world, but it essentially just moves numbers around. And through those numbers, the faster it can move numbers around, the more things that can do. And so over the years, the number of calculations have gotten faster. So we can do a lot more language translations. And so we’ve gone from, you know, basic text inputs, of course, full on video, and everything. So everything is now done through numbers” So your computer never stops being a calculator, but what’s different is not just the speed that the computer is calculating, but what those numbers mean. “Yep, so we essentially assign numbers to a thing. So there’s things called bits and bytes, and it’s binary and how it’s formed. But essentially, we can take a string of numbers and say, this string of numbers equals a letter A, and this string of numbers equals a letter Z. And then once we start assigning numbers to letters, then it gives us tons and tons of capability because we
But at what point does a simple calculator become the sophisticated devices that are in every
“[Computers] are really about taking the world around you and then giving you a richer interaction with it”. part of our lives? According to Allmon, the trick is numbers. “So
can translate those numbers into human readable and human usable format. So that’s how we get things like spreadsheets and Word documents, they are in the back end, they’re just the computers, looking at the different numbers that represent letters and doing things with them. And as we started out, the programs are simple. We started getting more and more complex, and we build and build and build and build on what we’ve done before. So if you look at things like Windows, or Linux, or Mac OS, you know, they started out very simple programs, we probably couldn’t start over from scratch and build one of those, you know, out of the box today, people are building new operating systems, but it takes years and years for them to evolve into the complexities the systems we have today. If you look, I think it was just like the 50th anniversary of the first Linux kernel, which is like the kernel core of an operating system. And so it’s one of those things that, you know, not one person is really responsible for what we have today. It’s really a team effort. And that’s why things change are so complicated. That’s why we have crazy things like ransomware and crashing and things like that, because it’s so complicated. There’s so many lines of code that it’s just impossible to look at it, that you have to look at it holistically and build on what was built before.” A computer is just a fancy calculator with an interface. Every operation you do is just math, each key is just some numbers. And over the years these layers of complexity have grown and built on each other to make complicat-
ed things that have never existed before. But what is a core in your computer? Maybe you’ve heard of multitasking, but what is it? “Let’s say you’re cooking a meal, with our earlier analogy, you can only cook one meal at a time in one kitchen. Doesn’t matter if the kitchen is bigger, if you only have one big stove, you can only cook one meal at a time on a big stove.
chef in the kitchen now has a bunch of cooks running around a bunch of kitchens, and he has to be able to manage that. And so that’s what the virtualization layer is, it’s like putting a chef in charge of everything that says, okay, you run this stove, you’re cutting over here on the cooking board, you’re pulling things out of the cupboard, somebody has to kind of coordinate all of that.
“But if you’ve got three or four or five stoves, then you can cook multiple meals at the same time. Because you can have different things cooking different meals cooking, you know, ... So that you can do and you can get them all come out at the same time ... you see that analogy allows for more efficient tasks, the problem is you still have to manage all of the all of that space.
“And that’s what the virtual machine controller is. They’re like the VMware model. So we had to create essentially a new operating system to manage all of the other tasks. And so now we’ve got a chef running a bunch of other things, it’s still more efficient, it just makes things more complicated. And so we have to get better and better at that programming language and the management.
“So you know, the more cores you get, the more complicated that scheduling is who’s going to do what piece. So there is a trade off, it’s not like it’s just a one to one that we put more cores on, it’s easy, because essentially the
“And the big part. And the big reason for that was people were having to buy just computers for everything. We needed a web server that presents interfaces to people connecting to the web. That was one computer, we
The cutting board (above) is your ram The cupboard (right) is your memory And the stove (below) is your cpu
needed something processing our payroll management, that was another computer, we needed somebody processing our internal website, that’s another computer. “But a lot of times those computers when they weren’t being used, they were sitting idle. You know, nobody, let’s say that your web server during the day was serving up content, but overnight, not a lot of people were using it. So there was a lot of idle time in these components, they were basically sitting there paid for pulling energy and not being used. “With something like virtualization, when we carve that up and let somebody manage that we can actually squeeze all of those into one. And when it’s the web servers not being active, maybe the payroll processing we do overnight. So the web servers using the computer during the day, the same computer becomes available overnight, we can use the payroll processing. “So we’re using less infrastructure, less architecture, to do the same amount of work, which makes things more cost effective. We don’t have to buy as many computers. We don’t have to buy as much electricity. We don’t have to have as much space. It’s a much better use of our components and money. And so that’s how we’ve kind of gotten here from the old school, just the individual computers doing everything” A briefly visited but important topic that was discussed was the vmware model, or how your computer can create a fake virtual computer inside it and run
software on that. The software thinks it’s in a real computer and this has many benefits. Javier Hernandez, a head of technical account management at Atlassian gave a good example of how people use this nearly everyday. “You know how applications work, the machines quote unquote that they run on because I say machines, but that’s really like [amazon web services]... basically it’s somebody else’s computer so Amazon manages a computer how big how fast and you just deploy in there, and there are ways to manage that”. Yet all this comes with a cost. The technology is slowly becoming more and more complicated. But according to Hernandez, the fact that the average person may not understand what’s going on isn’t necessarily bad.
computer person to fix things quote unquote or know how they work you just expect it to work.” And all these are the reasons why you find so many computer companies. They’re either making the hardware or making software for it that makes things simpler or protecting your data. Or maybe they’re trying to help get those two to work together. Or companies like Hernandez’s that “[try] to figure out how to help them understand a better why so that the how that they were trying to get to makes more sense” as he described. Simply put, computers all came from a calculator and have evolved to become essential to everyday life, in perhaps the most human way possible.
“Right, so I don’t think that there should be an expectation that person also knows how to fix it because you know i’ll use an example, you know if your your mom and dad’s car breaks down and it’s something to do with their transmission, would you know how to fix it, probably not. “But there are people that know mechanics who specialize in fixing just transmissions so you want them to know their craft and know it well and fix it and not have someone who. You know, will just open the hood and try to fix something for someone right like that so so to answer your question I don’t know that it’s necessarily either or on that, I think that the technology is such that you know it’s gotten better that you don’t have to be beyond a hobbyist
Original transistors were huge as pictured above. Now they can be smaller than a strand of dna
Autopsy of a Desktop How the different parts of your computer work together By: Grant Bell
Below is a simplified diagram of the components of a desktop computer. Some of the pieces may be located in different locations depending on the computer. With that out of the way here are the pieces of a desktop computer.
RAM PSU
CPU Intake Fan
Hard Drive
Graphics PCI/E Slot PCI Slots
BIOS
Wikipedia: CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, BIOS, GPU, PCI, PCI Express, and PSU
CPU:
Central Proccessing Unit, is the brain of a computer. It distributes commands to its many sub processors, interperits instructions, and sends data to be stored.
RAM:
Random-Access Memory is a form of data storage that can be read and modified in any order which makes it increadably useful for storing data and machine code that could need to be called on at any moment. RAM can be called much faster than other types of data storage however RAM is general a volatile storage type. This means if power is shut off data in RAM is lost.
Hard Drive:
The Hard Drive of a computer can be a varity of storage types of hdd to ssd. It can be located inside or outside the computer which can offer removability. It is slower than RAM for calling data but can be removed from power without loss and can hold more data in a smaller space.
BIOS:
Basic Input/Output System is the very first bit of code run when your computer boots up and facilitates the setup of a computer and interatcs with the OS.
Graphics/GPU:
The Graphics Processing Unit is a highly specialized piece of hardware designed to accelerate the creation of images for an output device. Becuase of their architecure they are very good at running processes in parralel. Effectively multitasking.
Intake Fan:
An intake fan is a small fan mounted on the outside or in the wall of a computer and pulls air on to the circuitry usually the cpu or gpu to keep them cool as theycan often get dangerously hot. Some computers use methods such as water cooling or other designs to keep internals cool however fan cooled is still quite common.
PCI (E) Slots:
These are specialed slots that allow external hardware to be attached to the computer via a PCI bus. PCI-E is the more common better version of PCI. It is smaller faster and has better error detection.
PCIE slots (right) are smaller faster and have less pins as can be seen compared to PCI (left). This makes it the optimal choice.
PSU:
The Power Supply Unit is a component found in a computer which converts the input ac power to low voltage dc power which the rest of the computer will run on. Some PSU’s will continue to proide a small amount of standby power which helps the computer boot up after being shut down or placed in hibernation. A depiction of a CPU. In this diagram each small golden circle represents a pin. Often these are conected to a mother board or soemthing else so it can interact with memory and other parts of the computer
Picture by mikemacmarketing on wikimedia commons
The True Danger of AI How the most dangerous thing about Artificial Intelligence is the opposite of what people think By Jackson Edwards
Y
ou just got back home after a long, tired day. You sink into a chair and begin to browse the endless pages of content for your favorite streaming service. There are so many good options today. And there were good options yesterday. And the day before that. It is like it knows what you want before you even know that you want it. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is everywhere. It’s the autocomplete on our phones, it is in digital assistants
like Siri, it even controls your TV show recommendations, and the advertisements that pop up on your screen. You are surrounded by it constantly, even when you do not realize it. AI is an increasingly important topic in our world. The problem is, there are a lot of misunderstandings about what AI is capable of. Roy Keyes, a data scientist who has experience in AI, explained that “Artificial Intelligence is trying to get computers to do
things that we consider require human-like thinking. So that could be how to play games, how to make certain kinds of decisions, how to do things that are complicated. Specifically we think of it as doing things that are not super simple.” A “narrow” or “specific” AI is trained to perform only one task as efficiently as it can, such as play a game or identify an animal in a picture. In contrast, a general AI would be one that is able to apply
itself to nearly any task. This kind of AI has not been achieved yet. Keyes makes the comparison that like a human, a narrow AI can play a board game, but humans “can also tie their shoes, walk, and do all sorts of stuff” whereas an AI cannot accomplish nearly as much. Keyes said, “One of the big milestones was actually when Deepmind, which [is owned by] Google, was able to build a program that could beat the world’s best players in the game ‘Go’.” Go is an ancient Chinese board game that is still enjoyed today. It has many possible moves and strategies. The company “Deepmind” created AlphaGo, an AI trained to play the game. In 2016 AlphaGo was able to beat Ke Jie, the world’s number one player. “So that was a really big deal, [but] there is still a long way
to go before you would get what we call general artificial intelligence,” said Keyes. One of the biggest misunderstandings about AI is that “AI” and “robot” mean the same thing. An AI is a computer program, which means it does not have a physical form. It can exist in many different places and control many different things. A robot is what one sees
tried to sell their AIs as if they are more powerful than they are. However, as artificial intelligence-loving computer science teacher Anita Johnson puts it, “A lot of people think that somehow the computer is intelligent.” In reality, all AI does is learn and replicate patterns. AlphaGo may be able to play “Go” better than a human, but it does not know what a
“A lot of the confusion comes about because [AI] does do interesting stuff, ..., but there’s a lot of mystery as to what’s really going on. And it’s also not explained very well. So that sometimes makes it seem more powerful than it really is at the moment,” said Keyes in movies, something physical, usually metal or plastic, that is controlled by a computer program. They can exist together or separately, robots can be controlled by basic computer programs, and AI can operate a digital service of some sort. That is not to say that they cannot be combined, as the program controlling a robot can be an AI. Another very big misconception about AI is that AI knows what it is doing. Researchers and developers have always
board game is. Imagine an AI that is trained to identify cats. It might be able to learn that ears, fur, and whiskers mean that there is a cat in the picture. It could identify cats very well because of that. However, the AI is never going to understand what a cat, fur, whiskers, or paws actually are. All this AI does is classify collections of pixels. Keyes said, “A lot of the confusion comes about because [AI] does do interesting stuff, ..., but there’s a lot
people think like that, it is easy to jump to the “Terminator Scenario.” The Terminator scenario starts with AI becoming more intelligent than humans. Then, the AI is able to create more of itself. Finally, it decides that it does not like or need humans, and
“AI is going to be more and more important in society. It’s very crucial that people understand it better [and] understand the potentials and the limitations,” said Keyes.
decides to eradicate them. That is not remotely close to what AI can do. In reality, what we should be worried about is AI doing exactly what we tell it to do. The data that goes into training AI is what you will get as the result. “There’s really nothing beyond human intelligence that happens in artificial intelligence. So it’s a way to have machines make decisions based on what we know. That’s grossly oversimplified, but I think that might be the easiest way to say it,” Johnson said. “AI is very good at recognizing patterns. And so if we give it data that has
A concept image of a neural network, a certain kind of AI.
Picture by Loxaxs on wikimedia commons
of mystery as to what’s really going on. And it’s also not explained very well. So that sometimes makes it seem more powerful than it really is at the moment.” This leads to people thinking that AI is much closer to human intelligence than it really is. When
a certain pattern, it will do that.” If you feed Harry Potter into a writing AI, you will get Harry Potter back out. If you feed in ice cream names, you get ice cream names. Frequently, AI does not even fully understand its own goal because its creators do not tell it exactly what it should to do. Janelle Shane, author of “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You” and the AI Weirdness blog is an expert on this subject. Shane remarks, “There was a student who tried to train an AI to flip a pancake in a frying pan by having it maximize the amount of time the pancake spent in the air. So the PancakeBot used the frying pan to launch the pancake away across the room so it would stay in the air as long as possible.” There have been various AIs that were intended to build a virtual body that could travel or jump for as far or as long as possible in its virtual world. So, the AIs decided to assemble the body into a tall tower with a really long leg to maximize how far up they can go or to fall over to get to their destination fastest. AI’s misunderstandings frequently lead to unintended consequences. Keyes said, “What you do
is you feed [AI] tons and tons of data from the real world. And then they kind of learn how to make the decisions. And then what they’ll do is take existing societal biases, and then they just further or even make those biases worse by making decisions around [them].” In 2014, Amazon technicians started building an AI that could scan resumes and job applications. It was taught by looking at the decisions humans made when faced with different applications. In 2015, the technicians realized that the AI they had built had learned to be sexist. Anything in resumes with the word “women” would be penalized. Eventually, Amazon disbanded the team and stopped the project. Keyes said, “There have been some examples around [asking AI], ‘Should this person be released from jail?’ and then if it’s based on their demographic information, maybe the decision would be biased.” “AI is going to be more and more important in society. It’s very crucial that people understand it better [and] understand the potentials and the limitations,” said Keyes. Researchers market it and showcase it like it is more intelligent than the
“AI is much closer in computing power to a worm than to a human being,” said Shane. reality. In actuality, “AI is much closer in computing power to a worm than to a human being,” said Shane. It understands nearly nothing about what it is doing. It does not know what behaviors are good or bad, only what works and what it already sees. Shane said, “People are trusting AI to make important decisions about hiring people, giving people parole, and monitoring people taking tests, without checking to see if the decisions it’s making are correct and fair.” If what it sees is bias, it will copy that bias. If it is told to help companies, it will do so, no matter the moral implications. As Johnson said “the most dangerous thing about artificial intelligence is not that it’s gonna do something we don’t tell it to do, it’s [that it’s] going to do exactly what we tell it to do. I think people are dangerous enough.” AI will do exactly what humans tell it. That is the true danger of AI.
AI in the Media 1950
1951
Alan Turing invents the Turing Test. One judge, a human player, and an AI will be seperated from each other. The players speak to the judge. The AI passes if the judge thinks the AI is human.
The movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is released. A movie about an alien and his robot companion.
1984
1987-1993
The movie “The Terminator” is created. It sets in the idea that AI will eventually become the evil Skynet, and decide humans need to be killed.
The Second AI winter. Once again, people could not deliver on promises and AI lost all funding.
2001
2011
Eugene Goostman passes the Turing Test. Eugene was one of the first Chatbots to pass the Turing Test. He did this by pretending to be a young Ukrainian boy without good english.
We now have Siri, and other personal AI chatbots. Siri is a very capable AI that can understand human speech.
Sources: Juan Alberto Sánchez Margallo from wikimedia commons, https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/Turing-test, James Vaughan from flickr, https://www en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(film), Simon Greig from flickr, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(character), https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-the-first-ai en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix, http://www.sci.utah.edu/~beiwang/teaching/cs1060/Lecture02-CS1060-AI.pdf, Kavakavins111 from wikimedia commons, https://www.app
1974-1980
1977
The first AI winter occurs. AI’s abilities were oversold, and when researchers could not deliver, people lost interest.
Star Wars, A New Hope is released. C3PO and R2D2 are both droids with a powerful artificial intelligence, making them as smart as any human.
1997
1999
Deep Blue Chess playing AI beats the Russian Chess Grandmaster, Garry Kasparov in a match. This scares Kasparov and the rest of the world.
2014
Ex Machina comes out. This is a movie about AI being able to pass as human, even manipulating humans and causing them to fall in love.
The movie “The Matrix” comes out. This is very similar to the terminator scenario, an idea easy to latch on to about AI deciding to destroy the world.
2017
AlphaGo beats Ke Jie, the world’s best player of the game “Go”. It was a landmark moment for AI, but many people began to worry about getting closer to the terminator scenario.
w.britannica.com/topic/The-Day-the-Earth-Stood-Still-film-1951, https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-the-first-ai-winter-6f8c2186f80b, Tom Mac from flickr, https:// i-winter-6f8c2186f80b, Anton Chiang from wikimedia commons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov, Forsaken Fotos from flickr, https:// ple.com/siri/, Kanijoman from flickr, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film)#Plot, Alvin Trusty from flickr, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo_versus_Ke_Jie.
Let the Games Begin!
How video games and coding have developed over time
By Luke Tindall Pong being played on a TV.
B
ack in the 70s, video games and coding as we know them didn’t exist. They have changed so much in such a small amount of time that they are hardly recognizable to what they once were. The journey that has led to these developments is an interesting story, changes big and small have changed the industry from nothing to something.
It began in the 70s to 80s, when video games started to be recognized as fun pastimes. Before this time, there weren’t many video games to choose from, so no one played any and they were not very popular. This all changed in the 70s and 80s. At this time, technology was advancing extremely fast, and video games were evolving quickly right alongside it. We went from games as simple as Pong, one of the first ever video games, to massively popular arcade classics in just 8 years. Around this time, arcades also became popularized among the youth, this is a big reason why video games had a massive boom.
During the 2000s, things started to boom for a second time. With Mario, Madden, GTA, Minecraft, and
several other massive games releasing around this time, it should come as no surprise that the 90s and 2000s were the biggest decades of all time for gaming. It was during this time that consoles became popularized as well, video games you could play at home and not have to pay for each attempt.
“I think the biggest change I noticed was the mid to late 2000s. This is when Minecraft and GTA V were released which are some of the biggest games in history.”
“It has become very popular to play video games, and I think that has some correlation to the fact that they are becoming easier and easier to run,” said Callum Atkinson, a student at Oxford. It is no wonder consoles became popular so fast. With new games and consoles releasing every year, there was no telling how popular video games were going to become. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic that for a long time prevented people from going out with friends or to school, many people turned to video gaming as a way of entertainment and an alternative way to socialize with friends. One game especially that hit it big because of the global pandemic was Nintendo’s Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH). ACNH was released March 20, 2020 which was right around the time that the lockdown began. Because of this, a large amount of people were looking for games, and consoles massively spiked. With this the
“Python has become much more popular throughout the world recently. Before it was mainly Java and Javascript that were popular for a while.” Nintendo Switch console line faced shortages throughout 2020. Nowadays, video games are hardly recognizable. They have changed in unimaginable ways, from Pong to Fortnite in just a few decades. The amount of technological developments humans have accomplished is astounding and the scale at which it has affected video gaming is astronomical. Interests of children and adults all over the world have been altered due to the
presence of video games in their life, and video games do not show any signs of ending their reign over industries any time soon. “I have noticed games changing not only in genre, to fit the popular demand, but also in their communities, graphics, and to an extent coding,” said Nora Müller, a university student.
Alongside all of these incredible changes, coding has had its fair share of changes. Many of these changes have had a massive impact on the astounding evolution of video games. During the dawn of video games, not many coding languages were used. Over time, more languages were developed, and more people learned how to code, making the field much more diverse. Every programmer has their own preferred languages, but recently, python is becoming more and more popular thanks to its versatility. “Python has become much more popular throughout the world recently. Before it was mainly Java and Javascript that were popular for a while,” said Callum. Coding for video games is different, coding languages that may not be very popular in coding websites, automating tasks, data analysis etc. may actually be very useful when
developing gaming software. “My preferred coding language is C++, the coding language that dominates the video games industry,” said Nora.
Video games aren’t going anywhere. That much is obvious, but the question is how are they going to change? Will they even be recognizable in a few years? Will they be played from the same devices or will there be entirely new technology? The answer? No one knows. The video game industry is very unpredictable for now, and all that we know is that it is booming and doesn’t show signs of stopping. Video games will continue to be prevalent in the lives of people of all ages. Companies are determined to do whatever it takes to keep consumers entertained across the world whether that means creating crazy new technologies or keeping them as similar as possible.
Games Over the Ages Game releases that have had a massive impact on the industry. By: Luke Tindall
1972: Pong
1985: Super Mario Brothers
One of the first ever video games, not to mention one of the most well known. The game that started a massive franchise.
One of the first ever first-person shooter games.
1993: Doom
2011: Minecraft
2017: Fortnite
Best selling game of all time, immense popularity, and creativity.
Arguably the most known, loved, and popular game of all time.
A fairly new game that blew up over the pandemic.
2020: Animal Crossing New Horizons
TODAY IN TECH Travis Huynh Jackson Edwards Grant Bell Luke Tindall
ISSUE #1
2021 DECEMBER
Liberal Arts and Science Academy
