Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Report On The Ethical Use Of Ai For Participatory Planning, Sahana Kotha, Blythe Wilson

City and Regional Planning

This report provides an overview of key considerations for using artificial intelligence for community engagement in urban planning. As interest in AI adoption in the public sector increases, an understanding of ethical issues is needed to guide responsible AI implementation. Informed by a literature review and interviews with urban planning practitioners and academics, this report describes and analyzes different AI-supported community engagement methods, explores case studies, and outlines key concerns and opportunities for using AI. We recommend that AI use for community engagement prioritizes transparency, human oversight and accountability, intentional AI implementation, and community involvement.

Assessing Public-Sector Readiness For Artificial Intelligence In Egypt, Renad Ahmed Anwar

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted in public-sector contexts, yet successful implementation depends on organizational readiness, particularly in developing countries. This study assesses the readiness of Egypt’s public sector for AI adoption using a qualitative expert opinion methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior professionals from global technology firms with extensive experience working with public-sector entities in Egypt.

Guided by by an integrated framework combining organizational readiness theory, the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework, and public value and governance perspectives, the study examines strategic, organizational, human, technological, societal, and governance dimensions of AI readiness. The findings indicate that while Egypt demonstrates strong …

Dumatree: Free Online Education In Bridging The Migrant Digital Divide, Mia Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research Questions: This capstone project addresses two primary research questions. First, it examines the digital divide within the immigrant-serving non-profit sector, specifically investigating the lack of computer and digital skills training in organizations that serve refugees and migrants. Second, it asks: is it possible to build a scalable, professional-grade tech curriculum using only free, Wi-Fi-accessible online tools? To address the first question, 50 non-profit organizations serving refugees and migrants were reviewed to assess their technical education offerings. To address the second question, Dumatree.com was developed using universally accessible digital resources. A website was the most appropriate format for this project, …

Examining Portrayals Of Gender In The Design Of Ai Voice Assistants, Olivia Fratangelo

Student Theses

This capstone project provides a theoretical framework for shifting the ways in which we think about and discuss anthropomorphized features of technological products, focusing specifically on applying this framework to the gendered design of AI voice assistants. The goal in providing this framework is to prompt readers to consider how we can think more critically about technology beyond our “preferences” and biases. Our roles as consumers of technology do not have to be passive ones. In fact, the dialectical relationship between humanity and technology makes everyone who contributes to society not just a consumer, but a developer of technology in …

Early Islamic-Period Glass Finds From Ramla, Tamar Winter

'Atiqot

The excavation at Ramla yielded a rich variety of glass finds, most of which were free-blown and decorated, and some production remains. Some of the finds are characteristic of the Umayyad period, while most date to the Abbasid–Fatimid periods, with some types continuing into the Mamluk period. The rich variety of the glass assemblage and sophisticated nature of the vessel types attest to the affluence of the population inhabiting this part of Ramla, and the familiarity of this population with contemporary trends of the glass industry.

The Flint Assemblage From Tel Bet Yeraḥ, Maayan Shemer

'Atiqot

The excavation at Tel Bet Yeraḥ yielded 209 flint items, originating from five distinct occupation strata. The assemblage generally represents an industry characteristic of the Early Bronze Age, defined mainly by the consistent presence of Canaanean blades. The abundance of Canaanean blades produced from local raw material may indicate the existence of a specialized workshop near the site.

Moral Panic Or Public Health Crisis? Lessons From Drugs And Gambling For “Addictive” Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, Haomin (Kevin) Yan

Faculty Articles

In her important book, Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein illustrates the value of a comparative approach, drawing lessons from fights around the regulation of tobacco and ultra-processed food for the regulation of social media. Building on Bernstein’s work, this symposium contribution aims to draw additional insight from experience with drug and gambling regulation for the regulation of social media, video games, AI, and other potentially-addictive technologies.

Specifically, after introducing Bernstein’s book and the foundation it lays, we draw six lessons from the study of psychoactive drugs and gambling. As we elaborate below: Lesson one is that …

Understanding How County Governments Strategically Plan And Strategize Technology: A Multiple Case Study In New York State, Battulga Buyannemekh

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Embedded in the communities they serve, local governments increasingly leverage technology to modernize processes and operations to digitally transform public services and interactions with stakeholders to create and add value. Concomitantly, they must ensure that the use of technology does not threaten the rights and safety of individuals and organizations. Digital transformation requires alignment of technology with institutional, organizational, and environmental factors in addition to persistent innovations in technology, policy, and management. This balancing act hinges on governments’ capacity for strategic technology decision-making. As technology’s value propositions expand and local governments become more reliant on it, there is a growing …

Volume 7 (2024) Artificial Intelligence And Responsibility, Arwa Alnajashi, Danielle Derise, Philip L. Frana, David Mcgraw, Amanda Sawyer, Tatjana Titareva, Raafat Zaini, Allie Zombron

International Journal on Responsibility

The seventh volume of the International Journal on Responsibility (IJR) arrives at a crucial moment in the evolution of artificial intelligence and its integration into our academic and social fabric. As we witness the rapid advancement and deployment of AI systems across various domains, this special issue examines the multifaceted dimensions of responsibility surrounding AI technology, with a particular focus on its role in higher education and broader societal implications.

The articles in this volume contribute to our understanding of responsibility through diverse lenses, from classroom implementation to ethical design considerations. Together, they fulfill IJR’s central mission of exploring “Who …

Driving Green Investments To Address Climate Change, Baptiste Gibrat

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The climate crisis is no longer news, and society needs to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions. Otherwise, the consequences of climate change will become increasingly catastrophic.

This thesis develops a framework to drive green investments, which reduce society’s dependance on fossil fuels. Initially, the research provides a comprehensive examination of these investments, followed by an exploration of three strategies to enhance their adoption: leveraging financial instruments and capital markets, implementing regulatory frameworks, and harnessing the power of technologies. To integrate these elements within a comprehensive framework, the study employs market research, reviews relevant literature, and includes interviews with …

Operational Energy Solutions For A 21st Century Battlefield, Nestor R. Levin

Space and Defense

Development of alternative energy storage and distribution capacity for the modern battlefield is a major national security interest.

Exploring Cultural, Health, And Technology Intersections: A Focus On Migrant Experiences, Merna Mina, Sahij Gill

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

Despite the plethora of theories and frameworks addressing culture, health, and technology adoption, there remains a notable absence of a unifying theory that comprehensively encompasses all three aspects, particularly concerning newcomers. The Health Belief Model, for example, underscores individual perceptions and attitudes toward health yet fails to consider the intricate interplay between cultural factors and technology adoption among immigrant populations. The Healthy Immigrant Effect, which posits that immigrants often exhibit better health outcomes than native-born individuals, does not mention the role of technology on health outcomes. Acculturation theories, while shedding light on the adaptation process, often fall short of explaining …

The Fourth Industrial Paradigm: The Emergence Of Artificial Intelligence As A Business Tool For Startups And Technology Companies, Evan Barr

Honors Theses

Society is currently living in an era known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0), which is primarily defined by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, which provide prediction capabilities for businesses across all industries. But how are small technology companies and startup businesses navigating the influx of future possibilities of AI? This thesis examines how governments and consulting firms portray the future possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Using Sheila Jasanoff’s concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, the research explores how these imaginaries shape AI narratives through primary documents like the Biden Administration's "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights" and McKinsey & …

Ireland, Intellectual Property And The Political Economy Of Information Monopolies, Kenneth W. Murphy

Articles

Ireland’s policies towards US-owned global digital intermediaries (Big Tech) have emerged as an international political issue and received global media attention. So far, political and media focus has been on the impact of Ireland’s tax policies on the revenue-raising ability of other European states and perceptions of light touch regulation of those corporations based in the Republic. The current paper will focus on how Ireland’s switch to a focus on capital allowances for the sizeable American tech corporations has enabled the latter to sustain their dominance in the digital transition through incentivizing and subsidizing their switch to assetization as a …

Ensuring Responsible And Transparent Use Of Generative Ai In Extension, Paul A. Hill, Lendel K. Narine

Journal of Extension

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of generating human-like text, images, and ideas from existing data based on user-defined prompts, will inevitably impact Extension, including increasing efficiency, productivity, and performing tasks previously exclusive to humans. There are ethical and risk-related considerations surrounding the use of generative AI, including concerns about bias and unintended consequences. It is important for Extension to consider these implications and take steps to ensure that generative AI is used in a responsible and transparent manner. Extension must ensure that educators and staff have the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively utilize and integrate this technology.

Technologies And Time Tempers: How Things Mediate A State’S (Cyber Vulnerability) Disclosure Practices, Clare Stevens

Secrecy and Society

State secrecy and disclosure practices are often treated as processes of intentional and strategic human agency, and as forms of political time management (Bok 1982; Horn 2011). Through a critical analysis of the United States government’s disclosure practices in the context of their discourse around the cybersecurity “Vulnerabilities Equities Process” (VEP), this paper will present a two-fold argument against these conventional treatments of secrecy and disclosure. While government secrecy and disclosure can certainly be understood as a form of (agential) timing, orientation and control (Hom 2018), this paper will also show how government secrecy practices are emergent at the point …

Introduction To The Special Issue On Secrecy And Technologies, Clare Stevens, Sam Forsythe

Secrecy and Society

Many scholars have treated the inscrutability of technologies, secrecy, and other unknowns as moral and ethical challenges that can be resolved through transparency and openness. This paper, and the special issue it introduces, instead wants to explore how we can understand the productive, strategic but also emancipatory potential of secrecy and ignorance in the development of security and technologies. This paper argues that rather than just being mediums or passive substrates, technologies are making a difference to how secrecy, disclosure, and transparency work. This special issue will show how technologies and time mediate secrecy and disclosure, and vice versa. This …

Foster Parent Knowledge And The Need For Information - Sharing Technology, Amy Lynne Averbuch

Dissertations

In 2023, the United States child welfare system suffers from disorganization, role ambiguity, and deficient transparency. With 12 contempt of court strikes for the system’s Director in 2022, it is clear why child welfare actors are unable to successfully perform. Foster parents, a key stakeholder in the proper care of children, report being unable to successfully perform because they are raising children with significant needs and trauma while having to locate and navigate child welfare system laws, policies, and procedures on their own. The purpose of this research project was to 1 ) identify whether foster parents know who is …

Realizing Innovation And Sustainability: A Case Study Of Macau Sar’S Smart City Development Capabilities, Yujia He, Felix Ter Chian Tan, Carmen Leong, Jingbo Huang, Don Rodney Junio

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

The emergence of digital technologies has transformed organizational innovation with important implications for a city, its economy and policymaking. Despite this, research on how capabilities underpin innovation through smart city initiatives is still lacking. To address this gap, we conduct an empirical investigation of smart city initiatives in Macau, a former Portuguese colony and now special administrative region (SAR) of China. The case study adopts a qualitative approach, using data collected through fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews with stakeholders, and analysis of secondary documents. The study develops a stage-based assessment of innovation capabilities related to the use of technologies in …

Algorithmic Sovereignty: Machine Learning, Ground Truth, And The State Of Exception, Matthew Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the influence of algorithmic security technology on political theories of sovereignty and the state of exception. In computer science, an exception is a special circumstance that prevents a program from terminating normally. In political theory, the state of exception, as theorized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, cannot be encoded within the normal liberal legal order. With states’ increasing turn toward algorithmic answers to questions of ‘security,’ which, per Agamben, is the long-term form of the political state of exception, the relationship between the concept of the exception in these two disciplines comes to the fore. In …

Digital Job Growth In The Mountain West, 2002-2020, Lana Kojoian, Miguel Soriano Ralston, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data from the Brookings Institution report, “As the Digitalization of Work Expands, Place-based Solutions Can Bridge the Gaps,” which explores information on digital job growth in the U.S. The original report contains the digitalization scores of each state from 2002 to 2020 as well as scores for specific occupations. This fact sheet focuses on the digital job growth for each state in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah) and their metros.

Machines With Heart: Utilizing An Sts Framework To Analyze Implementation And Design Of Social Eldercare Robots In Germany And Japan, Lucy Conover

Pitzer Senior Theses

Robots are everywhere from car factories to cafes, but many people may not realize robots are quite popular in assisted living residencies for older adults. Social eldercare robots (SER) provide care to older adults without relying on human labor, offering a lucrative promise of technological efficiency during global labor crises. However, their adaptation into care settings is not this simple. Human trust in robots is rooted in nuanced social, cultural, and historical factors, making SER a highly interpretively flexible technology. This thesis analyzes social eldercare robot implementation in two countries, Germany and Japan, using a "Science, Technology and Society" (STS) …

How Then Shall We Work: Should Christian Engineers Pursue Productivity?, Kayt Frisch, Michael Foster, Justin R. Vander Werff

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Technology critics like Neal Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death) and Nicholas Carr (The Shallows) have long held forth that our technology shapes us. In recent years, philosophers (including some that have presented at past Christian Engineering Conferences) have explored the value-ladenness of engineering design and how the biases in our technology affect us on a daily basis. A “hidden in plain sight” technology that we interact with everyday is our approach to getting things done, or our “productivity system.” While everyone has a productivity system, that is, a way of organizing, prioritizing, and executing tasks, some have thought more explicitly …

Women In Tech In The Mountain West Cities, 2021, Saha Salahi, Joshua Padilla, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data exploring the SmartAsset, “Best Cities for Women in Tech – 2021 Edition” and presents information on the best cities for women in tech in the Mountain West. This fact sheet focuses on the eight cities in the Mountain West region that appear within the 63 U.S. cities included in the original report.

Deepfakes, Shallowfakes, And The Need For A Private Right Of Action, Eric Kocsis

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

For nearly as long as there have been photographs and videos, people have been editing and manipulating them to make them appear to be something they are not. Usually edited or manipulated photographs are relatively easy to detect, but those days are numbered. Technology has no morality; as it advances, so do the ways it can be misused. The lack of morality is no clearer than with deepfake technology.

People create deepfakes by inputting data sets, most often pictures or videos into a computer. A series of neural networks attempt to mimic the original data set until they are nearly …

Reflections On Co-Creating, Developing And Evaluating Virtual Reality Fieldtrips (Vrf): The Student’S Perspective, Catherine Gorman, Jennifer Stewart, Louise Bellew

Conference papers

To ensure graduates have the skill to work within the tourism industry, and spurred on by the paradigm shift in teaching due to Covid 19, this research focused on developing innovative solutions using technology. Using virtual assessment techniques, industry co-created evaluation, and integrated assessment, it explored how virtual field-trips can be developed as part of remote teaching methods. To provide context to the topic of sustainable tourism and technology, a student-led virtual seminar with industry was undertaken linking with TU Dublin Green Week 2021. In place of a fieldtrip using Google Earth and Screen-casto-matic, students created videos incorporating the sustainability …

Information Justice: The Histories And Futures Of Technology And Social Categories, Patrick Sweeney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation examines two controversies related to emergent uses of information from social media in psychological research and application. It focuses on controversies surrounding studies of face-based gaydar and the use of psychographic targeting by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US presidential election. Each controversy is analyzed in a case study that explores the issues specific to that study in relation to broader patterns across contexts to identify emergent trends in the use of information from social media in psychological research. Qualitative Content Analysis is used to analyze extant texts relevant to each case. In each study, findings related to …

The Power Of Connection: A Therapeutic Approach To Utilizing Technology And Social Media To Build Attachment, Tiffany Monk, Shalandra Whaley

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This session will explore how technology has become enmeshed in many aspects of daily life and elaborate on how to use technology and social media to foster healthy attachment in the classroom setting.

Educators and helping professionals will also learn safety implications and self-care that must be applied to lessen negative effects of technology use.

Art And Internet Infrastructure, Liat Berdugo

Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Scholarship

In her essay Art and Internet Infrastructure, multimedia artist, curator, and professor Liat Berdugo contemplates and complicates our overreliance and relationship with networks and technology especially during shelter-in-place.

‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib

Honors Theses

We are currently experiencing a revolution that is larger, arguably, than the industrial revolution, it’s the Internet, also known as the World Wide Web. The Internet has transformed how we live — how we talk, how we work, how we go about our daily business, and how we manage our finances on a global and individual level. In the late 1990s, an investor would search the World Wide Web and, within seconds, find 3,372 websites with the term "investment,” today, the same search for “investment” yields 1,860,000,000 results. Today, as proven with GameStop and other popular ‘meme stocks,’ social media, …