Kozminski Techblog

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Nowadays, it has come to no one’s surprise that technology have greatly advanced in the past decades. Now, some humans may fail to realize how we have to deal with more and more robots, A.I, and CPU’s in our day to day routines. It is no secret that these technological advancements have been truly amazing and to see how much we have evolved and developed with these inventions. We have reached a point where we can do anything we want and get anything we desire from home using a simple device called a phone. If someone was to hear about our technological progress and development now a hundred years ago, they would think it’s a joke. A lot of people fail to realize by just how much bots and robots are integrated into our system and society at this point, and how an A.I machine now lives in the majority of our space in every single corner or footstep we take, it’s like we are going to be overrun by robots soon. But are these robots actually physically and emotionally capable of cooperating with us and being so integrated to society to the point that forming an emotional connection or a relationship with an A.I or robot does not seem so far from the ordinary? Could that be viewed as a problem? or will it be the key for humanity to finally unlock what has been missing in a number of people’s hearts?

I think that the first basic step towards achieving and finding love is to have basic general feelings, to like, to dislike, to fear, to get excited and many more, if someone who has no feelings how can he/she ever fall in love? In my opinion he/she can’t. A person has to have complete understanding of his or her emotions and be able to accept what they feel at all times, is this something a robot can achieve? is this something we as humans will be able to develop? Will AI be able to replicate human emotions into robots at some point?

As of now robots do not have any feelings or any emotions, similar to a human, a robot can smile, a robot can get nervous when there is a lot of actions happening around it, but is it really its nature to be behaving this way? It’s not. A robot is programed to act and behave in a certain way as a reaction to its environment, a robot isn’t smiling because its happy, a robot isn’t acting nervous because it is actually nervous. It is just that it had been assigned to work in specific way as an attempt to mimic human emotions. So currently a robot can’t fall in love with a human, but can a human fall in love with a robot? I think it’s possible for a human to fall in love with a robot because unlike robots, humans do have emotions, even though a person knows that robots aren’t a living thing, love is complicated, and I think that some people would find everything they want within a robot if it was programed the way they wanted it to act and behave.

The main question is: will robots ever have the capacity to love back?

Resources:

https://orge.medium.com/the-future-of-love-robot-sex-and-ai-relationships-3b7c7913bb07

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_you_teach_a_robot_to_love

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Many people including me have noticed the decreasing rate of using physical cash in payments while the increasing rate of using online payments and debit/credit cards.

Who would have imagined 100 years ago that we will be paying through something called an online transaction or payment, I don’t think a lot of people anticipated this rapid sequence of development.

Pros and cons of cash:

for someone who is using cash he/she won’t have to worry about any security breaches, paying with cash protects and prevents your personal data as well as your money, because it’s always next to you, there is no risk or fear from hackers online, you have more control over your spending’s when your cash is finished its finished (you can’t spend more than what you have), you don’t go into any debts unlike when using a credit card for example. Also cash is accepted everywhere, many people tend to think that its more private and more secure.

However, using cash has its downsides as well, the most main one is that cash can be lost or stolen, more over with the world as it is headed more and more towards technology and electronic development, electronic purchases won’t be an option or rather won’t be available maybe you would miss out on some rewards or promotions online. You will also miss the opportunity to build credit. And it’s also more difficult to track your expenses and payments with cash.

Pros and cons of online payments/cards:

Basically the advantages of using electronic payment methods solve most of the downsides of using cash, it’s better to pay big amounts of money by card as its much more convenient and easier to do, you can track your balance and money received and sent, you can use more money than you have (using credit, which can also be a disadvantage), on the other side, there are also downsides when using card and online payments, as some technical problems may occur, security threat and concern, sometimes there is limitation on the amount of money you can pay, there is also expenses for the service as well as interest rate.

Throughout the last years, many people started wondering wither we will stop depending on using cash for our payments and depend completely on using online payments and cards and head towards a cashless environment.

I would say that the younger generation is headed more towards the cashless environment while the older generation is still stick to using cash, mainly because they don’t trust the online procedures, and they aren’t used to it as they have used cash as their way of buying for most of their life.

Ultimately, cash may in fact disappear. But it’s mostly a question of where and when. While it may disappear in some countries, it might remain in others.

Resources:

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/cash-vs-credit-which-should-i-use/

https://www.sbalynxpayment.org/post/advantages-disadvantages-of-cash-discounts-allowances

The Pros And Cons Of Cash Vs Card

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First I will talk about basic chemistry so that everybody can have an understanding about nuclear energy, nuclear energy is usually produced by either one of two ways, the first way is called fission which occurs when the nuclei splits into several parts which results in the releasing of nuclear energy, the second way is quite the opposite of the first one, which is by fusion which occurs when the nuclei of different atoms fuse together. keep in mind that fusion generates and produce more nuclear energy than fission.

Fission unlike fusion does generate a lot of harmful radioactive energy when occurring, while fusion on the other hand, even though it generates a lot of nuclear energy, it doesn’t create or produce harmful radioactive energy.

Advantages of nuclear energy:

I would say that the main advantage and the main benefit of using nuclear energy is that it’s a clean energy source, it doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases and its considered to be one of the weapons to be used against climate change. When comparing with other energy sources for example fossil fuels, its considered much safer from a health perspective. It also produces and create a lot of job opportunities in this industry. More over its relatively cheap to produce energy and it has a low operating cost, it’s also more reliable than other power generation sources, for example wind and solar energy need the sun and wind to be operating, nuclear energy can be generated anytime during the day, so you won’t experience delays or any issues regarding generating energy. It also can play a huge factor in the development of technology Nuclear can be used in many ways as shown in the figure below:

Disadvantages of nuclear energy: Even though nuclear energy has numerous advantages, it also has its list of disadvantages, first of all when using nuclear energy, it produces radioactive waste which hazardous, and which if not dealt with properly could cause some serious problems effecting the human health and environment, the radioactive waste created by the production of nuclear energy could stay around for thousands of years, so the main issue here is to how get rid of it? And how to store it?

The second disadvantage is that its water intensive, which means that the processes of generating nuclear energy requires alt of water, in current conditions when water is becoming scarce in some places and with the climate change that is happening this will be a huge problem to deal with.

More over even though nuclear energy has low operating cost, the initial cost/build up cost is very expensive and needs a lot of time, it usually takes 5 to 10 years according to researches to build a new nuclear plant. And it’s not a renewable energy source, this is because the fuel used in the production of nuclear energy (uranium) is a finite source of fuel and it will finish sooner or later.

Last but not least one of the main disadvantages of nuclear energy is the risk of nuclear accidents, an example of that is the Chernobyl accident, and the use of nuclear energy in the weapons industry and using it for war purposes, a- example we know all about is the accident that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in japan.

Can we really use nuclear energy in technology development for the long term?

in my opinion, as concluded from the above, nuclear energy can be very helpful if used efficiently and if used for the correct purposes, however this needs a lot of work and lot of capital, it could be a great weapon in facing greenhouse gases and in facing the climate change that is occurring and rapidly increasing very year, but can we really depend on it for the future? I don’t think so, because as mentioned earlier nuclear energy depends on uranium and uranium is a non-renewable energy source. So unless we find another source of uranium, I don’t think we can depend of nuclear energy for a lot of time and for the long future.

Resources:

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-is-nuclear-energy-the-science-of-nuclear-power#:~:text=Nuclear%20energy%20is%20a%20form,fusion%20%E2%80%93%20when%20nuclei%20fuse%20together.

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+better+fission+or+fusion&sxsrf=ALiCzsbkpAVgBIY79QreLvAsFyRiQ_C0pw:1668093967012&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib8uui9qP7AhVv_SoKHYkxBY4Q_AUoAnoECAMQBA&biw=1536&bih=754&dpr=1.25#imgrc=A49ycl2dR0NqIM

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-incredible-ways-nuclear-powers-our-lives

https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1551

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Football or as some people may call it soccer is one of the biggest sports in the world if not the biggest, its personally my favorite sport to play and watch, its popularity has been increasing nonstop to attract more and more football fans from all over the world, the beautiful game has had its share of being the main event and the main topic that everybody talks about, especially now with 7 days left for the biggest football tournament to start, the World cup, the world cup is the most watched sport event in history as it happens once every four years, it’s not something usual, its rare, and every football fan anticipates this moment to finally arrive.

But before talking more about the world cup, a lot of controversy has happened throughout history in football due to refereeing mistakes, and from a football fan point of view it hurts a lot to see your team which has given it his all to lose to a simple refereeing mistake, what did that lead to? It led to the use of AI in football.

AI is basically The application of computers to do tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence, such as visual perception, natural language understanding, and decision-making.

How was AI used in football?

A lot of football fans were complaining about the mistakes done from the referees on different occasions, this led the International Federation of Association Football (fifa) to work and develop a system called VAR (video assistance referee), VAR was firstly introduced and put into action in 2016, so about 6 years ago, since then it has developed a lot and became more accurate than before, but is it accurate enough?

Usually the referee is responsible for most of the decisions done on the football field, however there are some occasions where VAR interferes and its usually when there is a serious missed incident by the referee or when there is a match changing decision that was falsely took.

One of the most basic roles of AI in football is offering referees the third eye. The Goal Line and Video Assistant Referee are the two advanced technologies that sharpen the game with AI. These methodologies help referees to make the right decisions during matches.

Currently there is a human referee that monitors the VAR, however in the future there will be no need for a human referee to monitor the screens, Instead, using deep learning technology software would automatically detect for example when a foul has occurred in real time and alert the referee instantly when a player should be given a red card.

The most recent use of AI in football was the automated offside technology that will be used in the upcoming world cup as well as the goal line checking system which sends an automated message to the referee indicating whether the all crossed the line or not.

These kinds of technologies have increased the accuracy of making a better decision and has decreased the number of mistakes made during matches by referees, but I think that there is still room for more development.

Some people may argue that these new developed technologies has killed the suspense and the real enjoyment of the game, before introducing these technologies mistakes gave people something to argue about, the result wasn’t always the same, there was more suspense when the referee made his decision. It wasn’t always right. It was an enjoyment and a curse at the same time. What do you think?

Resources:

https://www.lawinsport.com/topics/item/artificial-intelligence-in-football-current-uses-contracting-tips-for-clubs

https://spryciarz.com/poradnik-typera/system-var,172

https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/semi-automated-offside-technology-to-be-used-at-fifa-world-cup-2022-tm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Cyber security is the act of protecting and securing one’s personal and sensitive information from attackers or hackers online, or as its called the protection from cyber-attacks.

Cyber security has been around for about 90 years, it has started from 1970s, and since then it has developed a lot in addition to attracting a lot of attention to it, resulting in the build of cybersecurity companies and businesses, as off course for a happy life, money is required, and business is money.

Advantages of cyber security:

Cybersecurity use and deploy people, technological systems and tools to protect data on a small scale as a person data, and on a larger scale as large as national security, cybersecurity benefits is that it protects ones intellectual property, it prevents financial fraud, it prevents data from unauthorized access, it’s the main line of defense against hackers and cyber-attacks, and it also increases our confidence and our psychological thinking that our data is indeed safe and that there is nothing to worry about.  

In cyber security, there is two types of security, we have defensive security, and the offensive security, you might ask what is the offensive security? The offensive security is when an ethical hacker tries to attack and breach your data so that he can point out the small breaches and weak points of the security systems, in order to be fixed, developed and protected from the actual hacker.

Disadvantages of cyber security:

Although cyber security has many benefits and advantages to one’s personal protection, it also has its list of draw backs, first of all cyber security is very expensive, small businesses may not be able to afford it, which will leave them at open risk to cyber-attacks, more over cyber security requires constant attention and monitoring, some people may find it risky to give their data away for somebody else in order to protect it and would make many scenarios in which what way this specific company would use their data, will they really protect our data?, is it really safe?, would they expose our data and sell it under the radar? And many more questions. There were many incidents in which cyber security failed to provide and protect from cyber-attacks, these incidents include the names of big companies, an example of that is the cyber-attack that happened on yahoo in 2014, more than 500million accounts were breached, personal data such as email address, passwords, names, telephone numbers and birthdates were exposed, the aftermath of this breach resulted in many effects on yahoo, as its stock price dropped by 3% after the first day only and it lost 1.3$billion in market capitalization.

So even though cybersecurity was developed throughout the years it also caught the attention of hackers and pushed cyber-attacks to develop as well, I think that it will be an endless cycle as cybersecurity companies will continue to develop its processes and security systems but at the same time it will force hackers and cyber-attacks to also develop and create new ways to breach their security systems.

References:

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/security/are-you-getting-bang-your-cybersecurity-budget-buck

https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-cyber-security

https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/Cyber-Security/