This blog contains ITGS news articles: You need to comment analysing it using the paper 2 question format. Criterion A — The issue and stakeholder(s) [4 marks] 1. (a) Describe one social/ethical concern related to the IT system in the article. (b) Describe the relationship of one primary stakeholder to the IT system in the article.
Criterion B — The IT concepts and processes [6 marks] 2. (a) Describe, step by step, how the IT system works. IT system: using hand-held computers, wireless network and central database. (b) Explain the relationship between the IT system and the social/ethical concern described in Criterion A.
Criterion C — The impact of the social/ethical issue(s) on stakeholders [8 marks] 3. Evaluate the impact of the social/ethical issues on the relevant stakeholders.
Criterion D — A solution to a problem arising from the article [8 marks] 4. Evaluate one possible solution that addresses at least one problem identified in Criterion C.
Cars that automatically call for help set to become law from 2018: EU rules demand all makers to install emergency 'black boxes'
By Victoria Wool
March 19th, 2015
From March 2018 every new car sold in the European Union will legally have to be equipped with eCall technology.
This will consist of a 'black box' that detects a crash and automatically calls the emergency services for help.
This box is also fitted with a GPS sensor so it can send the car's precise location to the control room.
From
March 2018, every new car sold in the EU will legally have to be
equipped with eCall technology. This will consist of a 'black box' that
detects a crash and automatically calls the emergency services for help.
Car manufacturers, including BMW, already include the technology in
their latest models Photo by: i3 pictured
The European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee voted in favour of the draft EU rules on Tuesday.
And the rules are expected to become law after a full European Parliament in April.
The plans were first
proposed last May, and in June 2014 the EU passed guidelines that
required all members to have the technology ready to handle eCalls set
up by October 2017.
At the time of the original proposals the Government said the gadget will add at least £100 to the cost of vehicles.
HOW DOES ECALL WORK?
The technology contains a
mobile phone-like SIM card designed to transmit the vehicle’s location
to emergency services in the event of a crash.
It is fitted inside a 'black box' built into the vehicle.
An SOS button near the dashboard, linked to a SIM card, allows drivers to call 999 quickly.
And if airbags are
deployed it automatically sends a text message to emergency services
with the car’s location - as well as its unique vehicle ID number.
The technology contains a
mobile phone-like SIM card designed to transmit the vehicle’s location
to emergency services in the event of a crash.
An SOS button near the dashboard allows drivers to call 112 quickly.
And if airbags are
deployed it automatically sends a text message to emergency services
with the car’s location - as well as its unique vehicle ID number.
But officials complained the scheme could be used by police or insurance companies to monitor motorists’ every move.
Motorists will be unable to switch it off and it will be tested in MoT checks.
Emma Carr, of civil
liberties group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘Motorists will not be
comfortable forcibly having a black box installed which is capable of
recording and transmitting their exact location when they are driving.’
The
technology contains a mobile phone-like SIM card designed to transmit
the vehicle’s location to emergency services. An SOS button near the
dashboard allows drivers to call 112 quickly. But officials complained
the scheme could be used by police or insurance companies to monitor
motorists’ every move
A separate study by the EU
Data Protection Supervisor warns of the ‘potential intrusiveness’ of
eCall given that it operates on the same basis as mobile phones and
‘potentially enables the constant collection of the vehicle’s
geolocation’.
It urged ‘stricter safeguards’ against ‘unlawful’ use of personal data.
Brussels insists eCall will save 2,500 lives a year by speeding up emergency services response times.
Some car manufacturers,
including BMW and Volvo, already include eCall devices in their latest
models. But voluntary take-up has been low across the industry, which
led to the new rules.
Amazon is recruiting people to assist with tests of its “Amazon Prime Air” drones in the U.K., job ads
posted in the last couple months show. However, the company faces
significant restrictions on the tests it can carry out in the country,
and aviation rules would require revamping for any commercial drone
rollout.
New machines are helping the retail giant get your stuff home on time
lifting 700-pound shelves full of multivolume encyclopedias, propane
grills or garden gnomes and dragging them across vast warehouse floors.
Carefully trained not to bump into one another, the squat workers are
320 pounds and a mere 16 inches tall.
1) The issue and stakeholder(s). Describe one social/ethical concern related to the IT system. 2 marks
Reliability and integrity - the system built inside robot might not be hundred percent reliable therefore robot might receive or calculate wrong data. 2) Describe the relationship of one primary stakeholder to the IT system. 2 marks Amazon company will use robots instead of employees and will have to be responsible for any accidents that happen because of the robots. 3) The IT concepts and processes. Describe, step by step, how the IT system works. 4 marks Robots are able to recognize the objects 4) Explain the relationship between the IT system and the social/ethical concern described in Criterion A. 4 marks 5) The impact of the social/ethical issue(s) on stakeholders. Evaluate the impact of the social/ethical issues on the relevant stakeholders. 8 marks
These robots help employees by picking up and delivering all the stuff. Thus reduces the amount of time the employees need to collect the stuff themselves. As the article mentioned "laborers are hard at work lifting 700 pound shelves", by using robots, this reduces risks of health issues for employees such as leg and back pain. The new features will increase the speed of delivery while providing greater local selection at a much lower cost for customers. The impact for environment is that less transport pollution will be released since people will not have to travel to the store and buy stuff, instead the robots transfer stuff to customers. This reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released from personal cars. Because Amazon employees only use one truck and deliver stuff to different houses. There will be less traffic occur because there will be less cars on the road since people will just stay at home and wait for their grocery to be delivered. This leads to less accident since there is not as many cars on road. Impact for Amazon company is that Amazon will be able to increase their profit since this new feature will be a favor for many customers whom are busy and have no time to go to the store. It allows many people to shop while they're at home. This would not waste their time traveling to the store. Therefore, this gives the company a better reputation. It will attract more customers to use Amazon service, not just its delivery service but also online shopping site. Amazon will be an example for other companies to use new technology and sets a new standard for e-commerce. The concerns are that robots are expensive and hard to build, therefore to build robots the company will have to hire technical employees to build robots in order to replace hundreds of old employees. The company will also have to buy hardware and install software inside the robots, then test the robots to ensure its ability. The robots need to be tested accurately to ensure that they will work effectively with no errors.
As futuristic as it may still sound, syncing up your home's appliances
and controlling them with your mobile device is science fact, not
science fiction. Several products are on the market, but a new one
stands out because it not only links up your whole house, it works in
unison with your existing automated systems.
As AI gets more and more powerful, a concertn grows that upon achieving relative sentience the AI would seek out to, similarly to a human, further its development and survival. The logic of the AI is "pure", based on cold calculations and emotionless.
Nanotechnology are also considered to be a threat, primarily because they permit production with atomic-level precision, potentially allowing producing much more developed weaponry and military equipment. Such equipment may eventually prove to be humanity's demise. Criterion A — The issue and stakeholder(s) [4 marks] 1. (a) Describe one social/ethical concern related to the IT system in the article. One main social concern is the increasing unemployment that would be associated with the development of better AI. As robots would repalce humans in more and more roles in the society and in work, more and more humans would end up jobless, and less and less would be required to retrain, since with the evolution of the AI the machines might start looking after themselves on their own.
(b) Describe the relationship of one primary stakeholder to the IT system in the article. One primary stakeholder would be the unskilled workers. The artificial intelligence gets more and more advanced and, eventually, machinery is expected to replace people on unskilled jobs. This may result in need for retraining for the people who have lost their jobs to the robots.
Criterion B — The IT concepts and processes [6 marks] 2. (a) Describe, step by step, how the IT system works. IT system: nanotechnologies and artificial intelligence. - A humanoid robot will receive information about its surroundings through various sensors and input devices such as cameras in the "eyes", microphones, chemical analysers to represent the sense of smell, etc.. - Analogue data from the sensors would then be converted into digital format by an A/D converter. - The robot will analyse the incoming digitised data and attempt to identify patterns. - The recognised patterns will be compared against a knowledge base of the robot. - The appropriate actions for the matching patterns will be assessed. - Robot will carry out the action deemed most appropriate. I.e.: detect fire with the temperature sensors, move away from fire.
(b) Explain the relationship between the IT system and the social/ethical concern described in Criterion A.
The artificial intelligence is getting visibly more and more sophisticated nowadays, to the point of passing the classic Turing test and already outmatching a human in terms of calculational and mental capabilities when it comes to more menial tasks. With this development, it is clear that in forseeable future "true" AI will be possible - AI which is self-aware and mimics, or is based upon the way humans think. This, however, has a major concern of essentially creating a machine that is equal to humans in some respects, making humans themselves a redundancy as the machines would be capable of building their own copies of themselves and looking after themselves. Thus, greatly reduced numbers of humans will be required in any computerised society to actually do work, causing massive unemployment that would not be fully mitigated by re-skilling and re-training due to the heavy use of self-sustaining machinery in the future. This has the potential of causing the global economical catastrophe. Also, de-skilling becomes a large issue, because, since machines become capable of doing many things for humans and of looking after themselves, fewer humans who are capable of doing something instead of the machines or fixing the machines would be needed. In most extreme scenarios it may lead to some skills being "forgotten" altogether.
Criterion C — The impact of the social/ethical issue(s) on stakeholders [8 marks] 3. Evaluate the impact of the social/ethical issues on the relevant stakeholders.
The main stakeholders in this case are the unskilled workers (and skilled workers of certain kinds), the potential robot-producing companies and the governments of the world. For the workers, the main potential impact would be their redundancy when robots are in place. This would mean that they are likely to be replaced by robots who have a number of advantages over human beings such as never needing to take a break or never asking for higher wages; jobless people would need reskilling (training to do something else), otherwise they face the possibility of being unable to make enough money to sustain themselves. Reskilling on its own is also likely to cost some money to these people, and sum, upon losing their job, may be unable to retrain. There is also an overall implication of deskilling as the people who were replaced by the robots are no longer needed in the society for their skills, and, therefore, these skills are "forgotten": in the absence of robots there would, therefore, be impossible to execute something requiring that particular lost skill. Negative social implication also arises: the people who are replaced by robots may be seen as useless parts of the society and ostracised as an inferior minority. On the other hand, people of specific jobs such as engineers, scientists, mechanics would likely benefit from the introduction of robots since they are likely to be the ones maintaining them and developing new models and upgrades. This means that they would become very necessary parts of the society, not only raising their prestige, but also potentially increasing their wages, considering that more money is available because it is not being paid to the unskilled workers that were replaced by machines. On the other hand, if a "true" AI comes around, like one discussed in the article, these workers also become somewhat redundant as the machines might gain ability to not only maintain themselves, but to also execute limited upgrades based on what is needed for work.
For the potential producers of robots the implications are seemingly positive. If AI becomes widely used technology, that is likely costly to make, producing robots with AI would be quite profitable business. On the other hand, these companies would have to consider the responsibility that falls on their shoulders. The article speaks of AI potentially given control over military systems - if such AI malfunctions not only catastrophic repercussions become possible, but also legal liability is likely to result in company's demise. Loss of prestige will also sharply reduce the profits of the company, should their AI malfunction.
For the governments, the main negative impact is the backlash from the citizens. Those who lost their jobs to robots may press the government into spending money to allow people free, or almost noncostly retraining; government is also likely to become unpopular with the people. There is also a chance for the economical collapse of the country due to the considerable fraction of the population losing their source of income, which, again, would likely lead to instability in the country and make government unpopular. Activists who are against the use and creation of AI, and those who are against exploitation of the AI (since it might be viewed as an equal to a person) may also rise up, protesting against the government. The main positive impact, however, is that a lot of money that would otherwise go to the wages of the human workers would be saved and, in the hands of the competent government, it could be used in a number of useful ways such as improvement of law enforcement, healthcare, infrastructure, etc.. Robots in the military would also allow to have an upper hand on potential military opponents, due to higher firepower and lack of fear of the machines, combined with their calm, calculative nature which would make them ideal commanders and strategists.
All in all, creation of "true" AI carries a major negative impact of bringing along massive unemployment if "sweeping" replacement of workers with the AI machines is permitted. This would potentially cause financial and governmental collapse. AI in the position of power is also dangerous, as its malfunction may cause major catastrophies. Hence, unless extreme caution is applied, the AI mainly brings major negative implications which makes its wide use unadvisable.
Criterion D — A solution to a problem arising from the article [8 marks] 4. Evaluate one possible solution that addresses at least one problem identified in Criterion C.
One solution to address the potential unemployment and financial collapse associated with it would be to provide free retraining to those who are fired from their jobs in favor of robots. While retraining may be costly in some countries, it should be considered that by providing a chance for free retraining government would not only become more popular in the eyes of those who lost their jobs, but would also avoid the financial collapse of the society as the retrained workers would gain chance for re-employment. Furthermore, this may stimulate the development of the AI and robotics as an area of business, as newly trained specialists may eventually go on to found their own companies producing and developing robots and AI, which overall increases the national income and boosts the country's economy; in turn, allowing for even faster evolution of the AI. On the other hand, it should be considered that this solution still bears considerable costs in the initial stage and does not immediately pay off. The government may be unable to provide universal retraining, and quality of the retraining may vary, resulting in specialists of varying levels of training. In this case, some people may still have to chance to be re-employed, either due to the lack of qualification or poor reputation of their alma-mater. These people are likely to be bitter towards the government. Furthermore, rapid, uncontrolled development of the AI and robotics as of a business may carry unfortunate implications: it would be harder to police the vast numbers of the development companies and would be harder to control the quality of the machines created and sold to public and government. Depending on the scale of malfunctions and types of the machines, this may result in either minor problems or a disaster.
Genomes project produces first diagnoses of rare diseases
Three men and their families will be eligible for personalised treatment designed to target their genetic defects
An illustration of DNA. Photograph: Alamy
Three men from two families are the first patients to be diagnosed
with rare diseases after volunteering to have their complete genetic
codes mapped as part of the groundbreaking 100,000 Genomes Project.
Quell is the world's first wearable for pain relief
One press and the pain is gone
Not every wearable is about step counting and sleep tracking. Quell aims to help people with chronic pain, so they can lead richer, more comfortable lives. It straps onto your calf, and is discreet enough to be worn under clothes without being noticeable. It promises pain relief at the touch of a button. How quell works? Press the button that was attached onto your calf, and it stimulates the sensory nerves in your upper calf. This sends neural pulses to your brain, triggering a natural response in your central nervous system that blocks the pain signals throughout your body. It's been cleared in the US by the FDA (the Federal Drug Administration), and uses tech developed by Neurometrix, a company that grew from Harvard Medical School and MIT and specialises in neurotechnology.
You calibrate it to your needs the first time you use it. You can also track your sleep and therapy sessions using the iOS app, though you can use it without a smartphone too. The downside is you'll have to keep buying the electrodes. A pack of two electrodes will cost $30. Each electrode lasts for about two weeks, so a month's supply will cost you about $1 per day.
1. (a) Describe one social/ethical concern related to the IT system in the article.
One social and ethical concern is that the patients might get fool or schemed over the product. Because the products have not been released to the market yet, no one get to test the product. So we don't know whether the product will work or not. The patients might get fooled over this scheme and lose money because of it. By blocking the pain using this device, the patient may also fail to notice the pain that might actually be good for the body. For example patients may not notice diseases with out the pain that come with it. Pain can indicate that person is sick or diagnosed with diseases. (b) Describe the relationship of one primary stakeholder to the IT system in the article.
The relationship between the stakeholder to the IT system is that the patients will also have to repurchase a battery over 2 weeks time, which may cause them lots of money in the long run.
Criterion B — The IT concepts and processes [6 marks] 2. (a) Describe, step by step, how the IT system works. IT system: using hand-held computers, wireless network and central database.
You press the button that was attached onto the calf to activate the device, and it will stimulates the sensory nerves and sends neural pulses to your brain, triggering a natural response in your central nervous system that blocks the pain signals throughout your body.
(b) Explain the relationship between the IT system and the social/ethical concern described in Criterion A.
It block pain of the patients by sending natural response signal inside the body. This device can block the pain that might actually be good for your body for example by sending signal in your body it could block the pain that tell the doctor or the person themselves that they are infected with certain diseases
Criterion C — The impact of the social/ethical issue(s) on stakeholders [8 marks] 3. Evaluate the impact of the social/ethical issues on the relevant stakeholders.
The impact on the first stakeholder would be patients
Advantages
Block pain inside your body.
Decrease stress and pain the patients may have felt
Develop a better thoughts- patients may heal
Disadvantages
Cause a lot of money (need to re buy battery every 2 weeks)
Can have an after effect on the person who is using it (sending harmful signal inside your body)
Block pain that might indicated new diseases (cannot cure on time)
Doctors
Advantages
Block pain inside the patients body (can help patients feel better)
Can reduce workload when create a pain relieve medicine
Can help the patient feel better about themselves
Disadvantages
Job lost
Less patients
Quell device can cause or block symptom that might indicated the patient are diagnosed with certain diseases
Quell developer
Advantages
Can gain money out of this device
Can develop a more advance device to help other people
Positive image and reputation
Disadvantages
If the device end up not working, might cause bad reputation
If the device do not work, people may sue the company
Can damage people lives
Criterion D — A solution to a problem arising from the article [8 marks] 4. Evaluate one possible solution that addresses at least one problem identified in Criterion C.
Free iPads, With a Catch: They’ll Squeal if You Cut Class
Lynn University, a small institution in Boca Raton, Fla.,
started giving away iPads to all its new students about a year and a
half ago. Now there is a catch: If those students cut class, their iPads
might tattle on them.
MPs 'dismayed' that police continue to compile database of faces
Commons science and technology committee says practice of uploading
custody photographs appears to flout high court ruling from 2012
More than 12m images have been uploaded to the police national database
for use with facial recognition software. Photograph: Image Source/Alamy
A committee of MPs has condemned police for continuing to upload
custody photographs, including of people never charged, to a face
recognition database, despite a high court judgement that ruled the
practice was unlawful.
From
March 2018, every new car sold in the EU will legally have to be
equipped with eCall technology. This will consist of a 'black box' that
detects a crash and automatically calls the emergency services for help.
Car manufacturers, including BMW, already include the technology in
their latest models Photo by: i3 pictured
The
technology contains a mobile phone-like SIM card designed to transmit
the vehicle’s location to emergency services. An SOS button near the
dashboard allows drivers to call 112 quickly. But officials complained
the scheme could be used by police or insurance companies to monitor
motorists’ every move 
