Research Essay

Your work as a computer scientist mainly focuses on building or technically analyzing software and computer systems. In this project, and throughout the class, you will consider such systems within the context of larger political and social questions. As such, much of your work will be to analyze how technical decisions can have broad, rippling effects in our society. The first part of analyzing a sociotechnical system is to understand and explain it. A computer science education provides you a unique technical background to understand such systems, but also poses difficulties in reaching a non-technical audience.

1. Proposal (1 page)

Select a research subject. If you’re stuck, consider the following examples (do not use them, of course):

  • “EU’s Right to Explanation”
  • “Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy”
  • “The Dystopian Path to Bicycle Safety”
  • “On the Perils of Automated Face Recognition”
  • “Algorithms aren’t racist. Your skin is just too dark.”

Then, research it, keeping track of your sources along the way. You must include five citations (as embedded links in the text or in a bibliography) in your proposal.

Explain to a general audience how your chosen system works.
You may assume the audience is college educated, but be sure to carefully explain any jargon. Feel free to include diagrams if they help your explanation.

Consider questions such as:
What’s the conceptual or theoretical background on which this technology or system is based?
What data does the system require as inputs? What are its outputs?
(if it’s a cyber-physical system) How does it interact with the physical world?
What types of sensors does it use? What are their limitations?
What algorithms does it use? How does it work?
What is the current state of the art of this technology? What are its current limitations?
Articulate a sequence of events that brought it into existence in its current form.

For example, one cannot consider early American analog and electronic computers without also considering their role in the Manhattan Project.
Your proposal MUST contain 5 embedded live links directly relevant to you topic. You will get 0 points for not having them.
Do not use chatGPT to generate the proposal, We will run your paper through a tool that recognizes text generated via GPT 3. You will get 0 points if your paper is identified as such.