Professors! Get online or get out!

16

October

2019

5/5 (1)

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As a BIM master student, I was quite surprised when I heard that none of the courses were recorded and therefore available online. Everyone I ever spoke about it was enthusiastic about recorded lectures. Maybe all of my friends are just lazy students (like me), who prefer to stay in bed rather than going to a 9 am lecture, but I genuinly think it offers more convenience than it has disadvantages. Me wondering this was the main reason for me to write on this subject.


MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses, and are (often free) courses that are available to the public through online lectures and assignments (EdX, 2019). It provides great advantages as you can enroll from anywhere around the world, as long as you have access to a decent internet connection.

First of all, and maybe the most obvious advantage of MOOC’s, it that the internet knows no borders. Of course we all know the Great Chinese Firewall, but someone from South-Korea is able to enter a website from a Colombian local bee farm. Therefore, people from more abandoned areas, like sub-Saharan Africa are able to enter these courses as long as there is a decent internet connection and a streaming device. According to UNESCO (2016), sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion in the world. Almost 60% of all youth between 15 and 17 there are not in school. Yes, they still require a streaming device, but a phone screen is in theory enough, and video projectors can be installed in classrooms.

This brings us to another advantage of MOOC’s, there is (in theory) no maximum student capacity. As it is a digital product, it can in theory be copied infinitely without reducing in quality. This means an enormous amount of people could follow the course of a single professor. This seems like a situation that only has benefits, but there are some risks. If a single professor is enough to educate a massive group of people, then I foresee a decrease of the need for professors. This may lead to many professors losing their job, and having to seek other ways to earn a living.

MOOC’s being a digital good also brings a major risk, the risk of the course content being copied and spread without consent and compensation. Screens can be recorded and assignments being copied. Websites like The PirateBay that provide a lot of illegal content are nowadays still available, whether it is through a proxy server or not). A solution must be sought to prevent piracy, because a single pirate is enough to create a lot of damage.

 

Another advantage of MOOC’s is that it provides an opportunity to gather data about its students. It can be tracked how much and when students spend time on the website, and which classes and courses are more and less attractive. Students may be able to provide a rating and a comment after every course. A risk of having too many students enrolled, is that a single professor may not be able to answer all questions or analyze feedback. This proves that a MOOC is not simply a professor with a webcam, but really requires a well-structured team or organization.

I would advise professors and universities to brainstorm about threats and opportunities in the increasingly digitized society. I believe that it’s very important not to miss the boat and to exploit first-mover advantages. Otherwise, you will remain the incumbent, while others become the disruptors.

 

References

EdX. (2019). mooc.org. Retrieved October 16, 2019, from http://mooc.org/.

UNESCO. (2016). Education in Africa. Retrieved October 16, 2019, from http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/education-africa.

 

5/5 (2) The Threat of Deepfakes

12

October

2019

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Last summer an app called DeepNude caused a lot of controversy in the (social) media. Deepnude was an AI based piece of software with the ability to create a very realistic nude pictures of any uploaded face in the app. Mass criticism followed, the app’s servers got overloaded by curious people and not much later, the app went offline permanently. Deepnude stated on twitter that the probability is misuse was too high and that the world “was not ready yet”. The app never came back online ever since  (Deepnude Twitter, 2019). It shows that deepfake technology is becoming available to the public sooner than we thought, including all potential risks.

A definition for DeepFake is “AI-based technology used to produce or alter video content so that it presents something that didn’t, in fact, occur” (Rouse, 2019). As deepfake is AI-based technology it is able to improve over time, as the amount of data input increases and the technology learns to how to create better output. In my opinion deepfake has an amazing potential in the entertainment industry, but there is a serious risk when the technology gets misused. The AI technology makes it harder and harder for humans to distinguish real videos from fake ones. Deepfake videos of world-leaders like Trump and Putin are already to be found on the internet. Also deepfake porn videos of celebrities are being discovered once in a while.

With the upcoming presidential elections of 2020 in the United States, politicians and and many others are seeking solutions to prevent a similar scenario like the 2017 elections. The 2017 presidential elections were characterized by the spread of fake news and the ongoing allegations resulting from it. These events very likely influenced the outcome of those elections (CNN, 2019). Recently the state of California passed a law which “criminalizes the creation and distribution of video content (as well as still images and audio) that are faked to pass off as genuine footage of politicians. (Winder, 2019).” In 2020 we’ll find out whether deepfakes have been restricted succesfully.

I hope developers and users of deepfake technology will become aware of the huge threats of deepfake, and will use it in a responsible way. It is also important for society to stay critical at their news sources and that they prevent supporting these types of technology misuse. According to Wired (Knight, 2019), Google has released thousands of deepfake videos to be used as AI input to detect other deepfake videos. Another company called Deeptrace is using deep learning and AI in order to detect and monitor deepfake videos (Deeptrace, sd).

See you in 2020…

References

CNN. (2019). 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts. Retrieved from CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/12/us/2016-presidential-election-investigation-fast-facts/index.html

Deepnude Twitter. (2019). deepnudeapp Twitter. Retrieved from Twitter: https://twitter.com/deepnudeapp

Deeptrace. (n.d.). About Deeptrace. Retrieved from Deeptrace: https://deeptracelabs.com/about/

Knight, W. (2019). Even the AI Behind Deepfakes Can’t Save Us From Being Duped. Retrieved from Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-deepfakes-cant-save-us-duped/

Rouse, M. (2019). What is deepfake (deep fake AI). Retrieved from TechTarget: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/deepfake

Winder, D. (2019). Forget Fake News, Deepfake Videos Are Really All About Non-Consensual Porn. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/10/08/forget-2020-election-fake-news-deepfake-videos-are-all-about-the-porn/#26a929963f99