Today in our seminar, we had the opportunity to speak with David Eaves, a government tech advocate and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. He discussed the potentials, fears, and issues of technology in government.

As Eaves puts it, Information Technology has shifted from a “does your computer work?” strategy to a “how can we get it to work for you” thought-process. We’re shifting from IT to Digital, where technology has become its own sector, rather than under the CFO who’d view it as naught but a cost. In this way, we can focus more on governance and making products better for the user.

Eaves stressed how important it is for the user experience to be valued first and foremost: the customer is always right. Before, governments purchased softwares solely based on what is the cheapest one. Now, the customer matters. Products are/should be designed for users. We need to ask the question, “how can I make this work for a citizen of my population”. Eaves mentioned the CalFresh case study where they were able to turn a 100+ questionnaire into a 9 question one, slashing the time it took to take from 45 minutes. I attended an event earlier in the year with Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the CTO of the City of Boston, and the head of the website team, who discussed how each portion of the website was scrapped and redesigned for better user experiences based on user-testing, field-testing, and surveys. They’ve also made immense amounts of data open to the public for access and for information.

Based on case studies around the world, governments have been shifting the Request for Procurement (RFP) process to a more agile framework, especially in smaller localities. This means breaking up RFPs into several smaller modules and moving forward with those with several contractors, and then hiring a single consultant who packages all of those into one big wrapper. Eaves says that this increases competition and efficiency. I’ve noticed that this same process is used in general construction projects around the world. While building a metro rail system, one contractor may work on pillars, another on track laying, another on signaling, and yet another on the actual rakes; however, in technology, I fear that this system may not be smart. Every module may be constructed in dramatically different ways, with varying languages and implementations. If such standards are agreed to before development, of course, these issues could be ironed over.

There is also a huge concern over privacy and security. If the government makes data more available or starts collecting more data (as they already have) to simplify processes, what if someone hacks into the “honey pot” and gains all the information? Or, is it fair for the government to have all this information about me? I could contend, yes, to a certain degree. The fact is that if someone really wanted your information, they would get it from other means. And, if you wanted to hide all of your personal information, you could do some with other means. The average citizen will rarely be impacted by government surveillance so long as they don’t commit a crime. So long as security measures are actively taken, the privacy and security issues don’t bother me too much.

All in all, government has always been an extremely inefficient engine. And, if any steps can be taken to simplify processes and make the system better, I’m all for them.

Over the past summer, I volunteered with Congresswoman Barbara Comstock’s (R-VA-10) reelection campaign, going to festivals, phone-banking, and going door-to-door. Republicans have a history of having strong, grassroots, ground-games, in a way that Democrats, excluding Presidential races since Obama in 2008, have failed to emulate. Republicans have data going back decades about voting records and tendencies. We were armed with mobile apps when we went door to door that told us what path to take, which houses to go to, which houses had Democrats and which have Republicans, and who could be convinced to jump the aisle. These statistics, in my experienced, proved highly valuable and accurate. While walking around neighborhoods, or calling homes, I would often be amazed by how precise the calculations and predictions were. We were able to tailor our pitches based on what we gleaned from the application, and we inputted what we learned from the potential voter back into the application, training the system for future users.

Elections have become increasingly data driven, targeting potential voters from the get-go, and not wasting time with party loyalists. Political advertisements have taken information from users’ tendencies and preferences to target their views, in the same way that Wal-Mart or Target (ha pun intended) would single out users’ traits. For example, as a college student, I’ve seen motley Bernie Sanders ads about college debt; however, I have yet to see an ad about social security.

Further, social media has begun to play an unprecedented role in elections. Republican Nominee for the President of the United States Donald Trump (wow, it’s honestly worse thinking of him with that formal title) can command the news cycle for weeks with a single Tweet. And, that’s his entire strategy: use buzzwords and crazy ideas to remain the headline. This also allows politicians to interact with the youth, as both Trump and Secretary Clinton are highly active on all forms of social media, ranging from Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat. In this way, they can access voters in their more personal fields, while they’re socializing and relaxing, rather than while they’re actively seeking news and information.

This, however, furthers social media echo chambers. The Wall Street Journal is able to compare Liberal and Conservative viewpoints on certain news issues based on the types of posts potential voters see on their Facebook News Feeds. Potential voters Tweet, Share, and Post media that they believe in, even they will do nothing to change your friends’ minds. Ultimately, you only see the posts for pages that Facebook and Twitter believe you will like or do like; thus, you will only see one side of the story. Either you’ll see NowThis videos, or you’ll see Breitbart report videos. There’s very little in between, albeit most of the nation is moderate, leading to increased partisanship and polarity.

What happens when Artificial Intelligence becomes as smart as us? Avengers 2: Age of Ultron wants us to believe that, for the sake of protecting humanity, the robots will try to destroy humanity.

That makes sense.

As computers grow more and more advanced, we keep reaching points that we weren’t supposed to. Computers were not supposed to be able to do anything they weren’t explicitly told to do. Until they did. Computers were not supposed to be able to beat us at chess. Until they did. Computers were not supposed to be able to play and win at Go. Until they did.

Computers, however, have a vastly different style of learning, aptly named, machine learning. Humans learn in two ways: 1. Through experiences that allow humans to form connections and memories; 2. By intuitively connecting multiple different experiences in a subconscious way. Machines need to be more explicit. They learn by taking hundreds, if not billions, of input cases and parsing them to form judgements on past inputs and expected cases. Machines make educated guesses, based on previous decisions that users accepted, and calculate a probability for each potential output based on how potentially useful it is. The machine then outputs the best possible answer.

In my sophomore year, I took a class on Artificial Intelligence where we had to code a machine learning tic-tac-toe solver. The process was simple: create a structure that would parse through all the submitted test cases, calculate the frequencies/probabilities of winning for each case,  and, while actually playing the game, run through all the possible moves and judge which one would likely lead to a victory. In this simple way, I was able to develop a tic-tac-toe AI that I could never beat (which, in all fairness, isn’t saying much because I’m terrible at tic-tac-toe).

We don’t really need to replicate human intelligence. Its long as we’re reaching this end goal of being able to solve problems, the process doesn’t matter. The actual biochemical processes of the human mind are irrelevant.

This also allows us to eschew fearing the Singularity. If the machines aren’t smart in the same way as humans, they will never reach the same type of self-awareness as humans and we can control their thoughts. So long as we limit the bounds of the artificial intelligence by focusing on the problems we want these machines to solve rather than getting them to solve them with “human” methods, we should be able to end up avoiding “self-awareness”.

We don’t need to fear technology so long as we continue to have control.

Many East Asian religions and philosophies were developed under the idea that everything is connected to a larger spirit; everything is interconnected and related. The Japanese wrapped up the idea under Shintoism, while the Hindus called it Brahman. Today, we call this idea the Internet of Things: everything is connected to the internet. Under the IoT system, thermostats will communicate with cameras, which will communicate with phones, which will communicate with light bulbs, which will communicate with doorbells.

The idea is that by placing sensors around your world, you can develop an ecosystem that works around you, simplifying your life and giving you more time to do things that matter to you. Products like Nest Thermostats are designed to track your habits and your preferences to be able to do things for you. For example, a Nest Theromostat specifically tracks whether you are in or out of the house and regulates the temperature based on that, saving you energy costs. It also tracks the local weather and adjusts the temperature accordingly. And, as it’s connected to the internet, it can be monitored via mobile devices.

With Apple’s HomeKit APIs, your home can be designed to be controlled completely with your iPhone. Philips Hue lightbulbs, Honeywell Lyric thermostats, and Ring doorbells all link to your iPhone and can be controlled by iOS 10’s new Home app; there’s a one-stop-shop for controlling your entire house. While this makes your life easy, the biggest follow up concerns are security and privacy.

No system is infallible. Even the American power grid system is susceptible to cyber-terror attacks. What if someone hacks into your email? They now have access to, well, everything. And, if you’re still stuck on Yahoo, then you’ve potentially already been hacked. In fact, tools for detecting and hacking IoT devices have been flooding underground, dark web forums.

So, the question is, is the convenience worth it? Are we okay with machines making decisions for us and leaving us to do other tasks? Is the trade-off something that we can handle? I guess, this a personal question that every individual considering investing in products will have to answer on their own.