Alexa, Please: Babysit My Child

According to the Statistics Canada report from 2019, when it comes to the amount of time spent online, Canada beats out every other country in the world. This has likely been amplified due to the stay-at-home order caused by the COVID-19 crisis, hence why the new Bill C-11 will strengthen the current policies defending Canadians from corporate digital overstep. Alexa, Please: Babysit My Child will explore, analyze, and evaluate Amazon's neuro-capitalistic technologies, specifically pertaining to the technologies made for child-use. Neuro-capitalism is dangerous as it speaks to controlling the mind through the current hyper-technological society. Jurisdictional complexity surrounding A.I. and cybersecurity can be mitigated by government-funded education. Therefore, my research explores the question: From a neuro-capitalistic & digital-colonial standpoint, to what extent are Amazon's child-targeted technologies' (such as Kindle 4 Kids) consistent with the privacy policies of the new, proposed Bill C-11? This policy analysis will consist of three sections—first, an analysis of Amazon's Kindle 4 Kids Terms and Conditions (Site 1). Second, an evaluation of Bill C-11’s ability to protect children from the pernicious aspects of neuro-capitalism (Site 2). Lastly, a compare and contrast section of the two entities, ending with a discussion of the findings. Particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, we must be sure that the Government of Canada is doing everything in their power to aid the youth of the country that spends the most time online and the most time with their babysitter: Alexa.&nbsp

A sociophonetic analysis of female-sounding virtual assistants

As conversational machines (e.g., Apple\u27s Siri and Amazon\u27s Alexa) are increasingly anthropomorphized by humans and viewed as active interlocutors, it raises questions about the social information indexed by machine voices. This thesis provides a preliminary exploration of the relationship between human sociophonetics, social expectations, and conversational machine voices. An in-depth literature review (a) explores human relationships with and expectations for real and movie robots, (b) discusses the rise of conversational machines, (c) assesses the history of how female human voices have been perceived, and (d) details social-indexical properties associated with F0, vowel formants (F1 and F2), -ING pronunciation, and /s/ center of gravity in human speech. With background context in place, Siri and Alexa\u27s voices were recorded reciting various sentences and passages and analyzed for each of the aforementioned vocal features. Results suggest that sociolinguistic data from studies on human voices could inform hypotheses about how users might characterize conversational machine voices and encourage further consideration of how human and machine sociophonetics might influence each other

I Call Alexa to the Stand : The Privacy Implications of Anthropomorphizing Virtual Assistants Accompanying Smart-Home Technology

This Note offers a solution to the unique privacy issues posed by the increasingly humanlike interactions users have with virtual assistants, such as Amazon\u27s Alexa, which accompany smart-home technology. These interactions almost certainly result in the users engaging in the cognitive phenomenon of anthropomorphism--more specifically, an assignment of agency. This is a phenomenon that has heretofore been ignored in the legal context, but both the rapidity of technological advancement and inadequacy of current applicable legal doctrine necessitate its consideration now. Since users view these anthropomorphized virtual assistants as persons rather than machines, the law should treat them as such. To accommodate this reality, either the courts or Congress should grant them legal personhood. This can be accomplished through the application of an objective test that is satisfied by the establishment of social and moral connections with these virtual assistants. Further, due to the paramount privacy concerns resulting from this technology\u27s use within the home, courts should establish a new privilege that protects the communications between users and their virtual assistants

Four Girls Respond to Young Adult Horror Fiction

This qualitative study provides insight into the separate reading experience of four adolescent girls as each engaged in the reading and discussion of a popular, self-selected young adult horror novel. The analysis and interpretation of data focused on the appeal of texts and the sociological implications of the reading experience. While questions regarding the appeal of young adult horror fiction grew from work with adolescent female horror readers, the social dimension of the inquiry stemmed from concerns of critical literacy theorists with regard to the ideological content of texts and its potential to shape readers into accepting dominant views. Data generated by four adolescent female readers in-separate case studies consisted of approximately 32 hours (eight hours per reader) of taped and transcribed conversation between respondents and researcher on a chapter-by-chapter basis. In addition, the data included an analysis and interpretation of the four texts. Critical theory was applied to the data for the purpose of examining the texts and responses for evidence of ideological socialization. Race, social class, gender, and sexuality were the four categories examined. Both the texts and the responses of the readers did reflect the ideologies of the dominant group, the white, middle class who displayed gender and sexually appropriate behaviors. Evidence of ideological socialization as a result of the textual experience, did not maternalize in the data, however. As for the appeal of this genre, the data suggested that readers were attracted to young adult horror fiction primarily for the effects or the feelings aroused in them by death, flesh, and fluids

Перспективний аналіз використання соціальних мереж як засобу навчання в навчальному середовищі

Didactic value of electronic social networks is determined by capabilities to provide group interaction. It is proved that ESN can act as means of collaborative training activities, means of social contacts deployment, extension of all participants’ social interaction in educational process. Attention is paid to emphasis change from network communication to productive discussion and from collaboration to cooperative learning methods for students. The problem of improving of information and communication competence of all learning process partners is described. Possible changes in teaching methodology, when new objects, electronic social networking services appear in the system of education, are examined.Дидактична цінність електронних соціальних мереж визначається через можливості забезпечення групової взаємодії. Доводиться, що ЕСМ можуть стати засобами спільної навчальної діяльності, а також засобами розгортання соціальних контактів та розширення соціальної взаємодії всіх учасників навчально-виховного процесу. Увагу приділено зміні акцентів з комунікації у мережі на організацію продуктивної дискусії, а також з колаборації на кооперативні методи навчання учнів. Розглядається проблема підвищення інформаційно-комунікаційної компетентності всіх учасників навчального процесу. Досліджено можливі зміни у методиці навчання, коли у системі засобів навчання з’являються нові об’єкти – сервіси електронних соціальних мереж

Responsible nudging for social good: new healthcare skills for AI-driven digital personal assistants

Traditional medical practices and relationships are changing given the widespread adoption of AI-driven technologies across the various domains of health and healthcare. In many cases, these new technologies are not specific to the field of healthcare. Still, they are existent, ubiquitous, and commercially available systems upskilled to integrate these novel care practices. Given the widespread adoption, coupled with the dramatic changes in practices, new ethical and social issues emerge due to how these systems nudge users into making decisions and changing behaviours. This article discusses how these AI-driven systems pose particular ethical challenges with regards to nudging. To confront these issues, the value sensitive design approach is adopted as a principled methodology that designers can adopt to design these systems to avoid harming and contribute to the social good. The AI for Social Good factors are adopted as the norms constraining maleficence. In contrast, higher-order values specific to AI, such as those from the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, are adopted as the values to be promoted as much as possible in design. The use case of Amazon Alexa's Healthcare Skills is used to illustrate this design approach. It provides an exemplar of how designers and engineers can begin to orientate their design programs of these technologies towards the social good

Development and comparison of customized voice-assistant systems for independent living older adults

Voice-controlled in-home personal assistants have great potential to assist older adults. This thesis explores the aspects of human-computer interface design, specifically a voice assistant, to help older adults manage their personal health, especially in the case of chronic health conditions. In our previous work, we have built a web interface for caregivers to monitor older adults' health changes based on in-home sensor data from motion sensors, bed sensors, and depth sensors. Data collected from these sensors are stored in servers and processed using several algorithms to obtain health and activity parameters including gait, fall risk, detect fall, motion patterns, sleep, heart rate, and respiration rate, as well as to generate health alerts. The sensor system with automated health alerts and care coordination has been shown to help seniors maintain better functionality. In our current research project, we focus on developing a consumer interface for older adults and their designated trusted others that can provide health information on-demand, based on spoken queries. The health information is presented as both audio and visual displays and uses graphical visualizations and linguistic summaries of the sensor data trends and changes. The goal is to present data in a form that is simple to understand. To accomplish our objective of creating an easy-to-use-and-understand health data interface for older adults, we explore voice-controlled, in-home personal assistants as a solution. Two voice assistant platforms with displays were selected for implementation and testing, namely, the Amazon Echo Show and the Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant.by Shradha ShaliniIncludes bibliographical reference

Alexa\u27s Artificial Intelligence Paves the Way for Big Tech\u27s Entrance into the Health Care Industry -- The Benefits to Efficiency and Support of the Patient-Centric System Outweigh the Impact on Privacy

Time is the most valuable commodity bought and sold in our society. In the health care industry, time is always at a premium, and even in areas with a high concentration of physicians, patient needs are often unmet. With the rising popularity of artificial intelligence in private homes, the Big Five tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google (FAAMG), are making strides to enter the health care industry and revolutionize it. Using Amazon’s partnership with electronic health record company, Cerner, this article will discuss how Big Five artificial intelligence technology will revolutionize the health care sector and create efficiency and greater access to health care. This article will also address future plans to fully integrate Alexa artificial intelligence technology into primary health care settings. There are many legitimate privacy concerns with integrating the always-listening artificial devices into sacred private spaces like the doctor’s office. The benefits of this systematic evolution of the health care sector, however, will outweigh the risks to privacy through improvements to efficiency, reductions to physical workload, and improved doctor-patient relationships. Society should support entry of artificial intelligence into health care and promote development of regulations as needed to mitigate concerns with how health data is stored and utilized. Ultimately, our existing health data privacy system is equipped to handle this AI integration. Ensuring FAAMG will not misuse data for advertising and granting the FTC the support it needs to enforce company policies will protect consumers