Thoughts on Final Topic Presentations

    Each of the other people in the class presented briefly on what they wanted to cover in their final topic. The topic I was most interested in hearing about were about dark design patterns in social media sites, but I was also interested in hearing more about the effects of quantum computing on cryptography. I already knew that sites used approaches that increase user engagement, but I was interested in hearing more about how it can be avoided. I don't use very many social media sites, but I think it would help me better understand why they are problematic and whether I should be avoiding more of the sites or using them differently. The quantum-safe cryptography topic is also interesting because this is an emerging technology that could address quantum algorithms for decryption. These topics were more interesting to me than topics covering LLMs and generative AI, which we have already talked about and have broad ethical issues owing to their tendency towards the unfair use of data for training, excessive power usage for training, their lack of effectiveness and reliability for many tasks, and other reasons.

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