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Here's why.

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In this day and age, it is near impossible to do anything without the use of technology. You can pay your bills, manage your bank accounts and even chat with a customer service representative all with the use of your smartphone.

Is the use of technology starting to take away from our person-to-person interaction? Think about how often you grab your smartphone or tablet and text your friends instead of picking up the phone to call them or, better yet, making plans to hang out in person.

Technology is supposed to make us feel more connected by allowing us to stay in touch with our friends by using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter and of course, texting. But are our smartphones getting in the way of socializing? Does technology make us feel more alone?

There is a term that is commonly used, "FOMO" -- short for "fear of missing out." Yes, this is a real thing. If for some crazy reason you don't check your Twitter or Facebook news feed every 10 minutes are you really missing out?

The fact that we have become so dependent on knowing exactly what is going on in other people's lives is sad. We should be focusing on our own lives and our own interactions and relationships with people.

Technology is making us more alone because instead of interacting with our friends in person, we are dependent on using our phones or tablets. We start to compare ourselves and our lives to others because of how many likes we get on our Instagram photos.

We are forgetting how to use our basic communication skills because we aren't interacting with each other, anymore. We are too busy with our noses in our phones. Young kids are dependent on a tablet to keep them entertained rather than playing with toys. That is not how I want my children to grow up.

As a society, we will start to become very lonely people if we don't start making changes. We are ruining personal relationships because of the addiction to our smartphones and checking our social media sites every five minutes.

It's time for us to own our mistakes and start to change. Next time you reach for your phone, stop yourself. When you are with your friends, ignore your phone and enjoy the company of your loved ones around you.

Technology is a great thing, but it is also going to be the thing that tears us apart as a society if we don't make changes on how dependent we are on it.

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In this day and age, it is near impossible to do anything without the use of technology. You can pay your bills, manage your bank accounts and even chat with a customer service representative all with the use of your smartphone. Is the use of technology starting to take away from our person-to-person interaction?

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Robots now give people travel suggestions.

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It's been a long time coming for road warriors - artificial intelligence is finally infiltrating the travel industry, and it's bringing a host of new conveniences and capabilities with it. From personalized recommendations and booking to digital concierge service, here's how AI will help make traveling a little less hectic.

Plan your next vacation through bots

AI stands to make a big impact in travel planning. Airlines and travel agencies alike use chatbots to automate the booking process and answer questions without involving an actual agent. And if an agent is needed, AI-powered apps can make smart suggestions based on context to help travelers complete the booking process faster.

And let's not forget the power of machine learning for offering consumers personalized recommendations. Apps like Google Trips make the whole process a snap. All you have to do is tell the app where you want to go, and AI takes it from there. You can easily book accommodations, plan an itinerary that you can update anytime, and keep all your documents and confirmations in one place.

Meet your robotic concierge

The robotic concierge is one of the coolest examples of automation in the travel industry. Connie, the result of a partnership between Hilton and IBM, provides hotel guests with information about the hotel, amenities, and local shops and restaurants. Most importantly, though, Connie is constantly improving through machine learning. As it answers more questions, it becomes better at interacting with guests - just like a real concierge.

You'll even find AI in your local airport, and airport security may get the biggest makeover of all. Airports around the world are testing a variety of AI-powered scanners and surveillance devices, with the dual intent to improve security and reduce lines. Dubai International Airport has taken things to the next level with a tunnel that features cameras embedded in a virtual aquarium. As people move through the tunnel and look at the "fish tank," the cameras scan and identify their faces. The plan is to have these tunnels rolled out to all terminals in the airport by 2020.

Benefit from convenience

AI's introduction to travel stems from travelers' desires for more convenience and greater efficiency. For example, chatbots can handle multiple basic inquiries at the same time so agents can focus on more important questions. Humans can also provide services more quickly than before because of lower call volume.

Other convenient innovations include powerful body scanners at airports that can scan a person in a fraction of a second. These systems use AI to identify guns, bombs, and other potential threats and are so fast they eliminate the need for passengers to stop in a security line. Since this pitstop is the source of most airport frustration and delay, this scanner's convenience is huge. And, since the scanners use machine learning to constantly improve, the technology will enhance security at the same time.

Implications for privacy and personal security

These new technologies will require a lot of data collection and analysis. Digital concierge recommendations and travel suggestions may require personally identifying information to be uploaded and stored in the cloud, which can make personal safety a concern. And, if history is any indication, it's only a matter of time before that data is breached. The companies pioneering this tech will need to set a strong precedent for taking privacy and security seriously.

And then there are the automated airport security scans and all their attending issues. With current systems, passengers are generally aware of when they're scanned, who's doing the scanning, and what the scan is looking for. Automated scans that happen instantaneously can take away a person's consent, which could be problematic. If you remember the privacy uproar raised when airport body scanners first rolled out, you'll get an idea of what you might see when robots start scanning at will.

While there are still a few unknowns with how AI will affect travel, the industry is heading for some very interesting destinations. As you book your next trip, look for ways AI can make every part of the experience simpler and more enjoyable.
Scott Bay is a digital journalist who specializes in security, travel, and finance.

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Bots are poised to take over the travel industry

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It's been a long time coming for road warriors - artificial intelligence is finally infiltrating the travel industry, and it's bringing a host of new conveniences and capabilities with it. From personalized recommendations and booking to digital concierge service, here's how AI will help make traveling a little less hectic.

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Facebook is dest

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One of Facebook's earliest executives has said the social network is "destroying how society works" and that he feels "tremendous guilt" about his work.

Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007, accused it of "programming" its users and said he no longer uses the website or allows his children to access it.

"It literally is at a point now where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works," he told an audience at Stanford University. "We are in a really bad state of affairs right now in my opinion, it is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other."

Palihapitiya, who was in charge of growing Facebook's global empire before leaving in 2011 to become a tech investor, is the latest in a string of early Facebook employees and investors to speak out about the evils of social media and warn the public about its effects on society.

Its former president Sean Parker has said Facebook is "exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology", while Roger McNamee, an early investor, has accused it of using the techniques of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

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Facebook is 'destroying how society works', former executive says

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One of Facebook's earliest executives has said the social network is "destroying how society works" and that he feels "tremendous guilt" about his work. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007, accused it of "programming" its users and said he no longer uses the website or allows his children to access it.

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Online currency is the new thing but is it reliable

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If you are worried you've missed out on making millions by betting on bitcoin, don't worry: there will be plenty more bizarre, borderline-incomprehensible digital bubbles in the future, and their value is only going to go up (until it all comes crashing down, that is). Here are five assets each competing to be the next bitcoin.

Ethereum

If there is a reason beyond market exuberance for the latest boom in bitcoin's price - $16,900 (£12,600) as I write this, though who knows what it will be when you read it - then it is Ethereum. It is hard to buy Ethereum directly, so most investors trade currency for bitcoin, then bitcoin for Ethereum, meaning a spike in interest in the latter helped revive the former.

Ethereum, which was launched in 2015, allows users to build "decentralised applications", spending tokens called "ether" to buy processing power on computers run by other members of the network. Those applications can offer anything from file storage to financial services or simple games, all in a way that is impossible for any centralised authority to shut them down.

CryptoKitties

One of the oddest Ethereum projects in operation, CryptoKitties is a three-way cross between Tamagotchis, Beanie Babies and animal husbandry. Users can buy, sell and breed the eponymous cats, with traits inherited down the generations. The CryptoKitties network is responsible for 11% of all traffic on Ethereum, according to one report. A new "gen0" cat is born every 15 minutes, which the company auctions off, and it also takes a cut of all other CryptoKittie sales. The typical cat sells for about $4 these days, but a few of the rarer cats - particularly those descended from some of the oldest bloodlines - are worth many times that. The most expensive CryptoKitty sold to date, Founder Cat #18, went for more than $110,000 on Thursday.

Monero

If lovable algorithmic cats are too cutesy for you, Monero harks back to the dark origins of the cryptocurrency craze. This alternative to bitcoin lets users make the same sort of digital transactions as its older sibling, but with vastly greater privacy protections. While bitcoin transactions are permanently recorded, and visible to everyone (if hard to connect to a real person), Monero goes to great lengths to obscure what is actually going on: you can't ever prove the sender, recipient and value of a transaction at the same time. The currency is also altered to make it easier to generate new coins using the sorts of processors in computers and phones, rather than requiring specialised "mining rigs". This makes it very popular for services ranging from drug dealing online to monetising malware by taking over the processors of victims.

LydianCoin

Perhaps you want to plough your money into something backed by an authority you trust. In that case, let me introduce you to LydianCoin, the "first AI big data marketing cloud for blockchain". If the buzzword bingo doesn't get you pulling out your e-wallet, maybe the celebrity backer will: in September, Paris Hilton said she is backing the currency.

Want someone else? Boxer Floyd Mayweather posted his support of Stox.com's ICO (a "Bancor-based open-source prediction market platform that is built on Ethereum", to quote industry news site Coin Telegraph), as well as Hubii Network (a content marketplace). He even dubbed himself "Floyd Crypto Mayweather". Or you could follow Jamie Foxx (Cobinhood, a "zero trading fee cryptocurrency exchange") or Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah (Cream Capital, a blockchain-based ATM network).

PlexCoin

PlexCoin, an innovative attempt to build "the next decentralised worldwide cryptocurrency", has already raised $15m from backers, so you'd better move fast to - ah, hang on. No. The founder has just been sent to jail for two months for, among other things, falsehoods on the company's fundraising documents, as well as taking investor money and using it to fund home improvements. A statement by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the company "hits all of the characteristics of a full-fledged cyber scam". Oh well. At least PlexCoin is now a steal on the open market: just 2¢ a coin, down from 12¢ before the SEC filed charges. Maybe you could buy low and make a killing after all?

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Missed the bitcoin boom? Five more baffling cryptocurrencies to blow your savings on

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If you are worried you've missed out on making millions by betting on bitcoin, don't worry: there will be plenty more bizarre, borderline-incomprehensible digital bubbles in the future, and their value is only going to go up (until it all comes crashing down, that is).

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How phones are changing our future for the worst.

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Our society has become inundated with smartphone technology. When you see students walking by themselves on the sidewalk, odds are they are either texting on their phone, listening to music on their phone or both. Cell phones have become so interconnected into our everyday lives that we barely even notice them; however, a recent study shows that they may be altering our brain.

According to an article by CNN, a study conducted by researchers from Korea University in Seoul shows that those diagnosed with an internet or smartphone addiction have "significantly higher levels of GABA, a neurotransmitter in the cortex that inhibits neurons, than levels of glutamate-glutamine, a neurotransmitter that energizes brain signals."

Higher levels of GABA affect an individual's ability to concentrate and avoid distractions. According to the article, the professor of neuroradiology at Korea University who led the study, Hyung Suk Seo, commented that "addicted teenagers in the study also had significantly higher scores in anxiety, depression and levels of insomnia and impulsivity."

The study only used 38 teenagers and has not been peer-reviewed yet; however, the findings match prior research which shows that multitaskers "tend to demonstrate smaller gray matter area in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is the area of the brain responsible for top-down attention control," Caglar Yildirim, assistant professor of human-computer interaction at the State University of New York at Oswego, told CNN.

Cellphone addiction is just one of those things that many accept as the cultural norm; however, we should become more aware of the damage these tiny screens can have on our lifestyle.

Just in the process of writing this article, I've stopped to mindlessly check my email, Instagram and Snapchat on my iPhone at least three times.

The average person checks their cell phone 110 times a day, according to 2013 data from app company Locket. How much extra time in the day would people have to engage with their surroundings and pursue hobbies if they were not constantly checking their phones?

I also often wonder how much more information people would retain if they did not have phones out in class. College students reported using their cell phones an average of 11 times per day in class, according to a 2013 survey conducted by researchers at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. In another study, 92 percent reported using their cell phones to send text messages during class.

Not only do these smartphones have the potential to become a distraction, but they can also put people in danger.

According to the National Safety Council (NSC), 26 percent of car accidents are caused by cell phone usage. Fifty-six percent of parents check their devices while driving, according to the Washington Post, and a report by Common Sense Media showed that 75 percent of users admit that they have texted at least once while driving.

These statistics clearly show the alarming effects that smartphones can have on an individual's ability to drive, not to mention the harm done to your sleeping pattern. College students already do not get enough sleep, but phones perpetuate this problem. According to an article by Business Insider, 58 percent of users check their smartphones before sleep and 52 percent of users check their smartphones within 15 minutes after waking up.

Smartphone screens emit a bright blue light that causes the brain to stop producing melatonin, a hormone that signals to the body that it is time to sleep, another Business Insider article found.

Our screens are slowly taking over our lives, affecting our ability to concentrate and form meaningful connections. It's important to step away from our smartphones sometimes and take time to reflect.

The good news is the study conducted by Korea University shows that cognitive behavioral therapy caused the teenagers GABA levels to normalize, so it is possible to fix our behavior.

In her article, CNN writer Sandee LaMotte suggests removing social media apps from your phone for a while or trying to cut down your phone time to 15-minute intervals. The article also says that you should not bring your phone to your bed.

Ultimately, try not to use your cell phone when interacting with other humans. Live in the moment - our time on this earth is short, and there are so many exciting moments out there to experience.
This is the opinion of Jessie Brown, a freshman film and television major from Houston, Texas. Tweet comments @LALoyolan or email editor@theloyolan.com.

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Smartphone technology is slowly taking over our lives

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Our society has become inundated with smartphone technology. When you see students walking by themselves on the sidewalk, odds are they are either texting on their phone, listening to music on their phone or both. Cell phones have become so interconnected into our everyday lives that we barely even notice them; however, a recent study shows that they may be altering our brain.

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Here's how

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Tristan Harris: How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day

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A handful of people working at a handful of tech companies steer the thoughts of billions of people every day, says design thinker Tristan Harris. From Facebook notifications to Snapstreaks to YouTube autoplays, they're all competing for one thing: your attention.

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Enterprises may be able to use it now.

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SAN FRANCISCO-Some of virtual reality's biggest boosters shared words of caution at the recent VRX Conference and Expo here on Dec. 7-8.

"We don't want to mad rush this technology and say it solves everything," said Frank Soqui,general manager of virtual reality and gaming at Intel. During a panel discussion on enterprise use cases for VR, Soqui pointed out some of the VR's limitations in terms of its ability to convey real world interactions.

"Looking at me is a sense of presence," Soqui said. If your eyes aren't able to make eye contact with the other person in a virtual space, you've lost a sense of presence, he said.

The more you engage a little bit of every sense, the more it seems real, he said, noting that sense of presence is helped by technology that some VR systems use, such as 360 degree audio and haptics, which deliver a sensation of touch.

VR may never be a perfect mimic of reality, but it may not need to be, said John Buzzell, president of YOU ARE HERE, an immersive experience lab that helps companies engage with customers. "Our brains are highly adaptable and want to believe," said Buzzell.

But getting a realistic experience is less important than the problems VR is supposed to be helping enterprises solve.

"We see a lot of R&D growth on the enterprise side. Many companies are looking for solutions to challenges they haven't been able to solve," said Stephanie Llamas, the head of Immersive Technology Insights at SuperData Research. However, Llamas notes that "a lot of enterprises haven't thought about it (VR)."

Surveys of enterprise users by SuperData Research put training and simulation among the top areas of interest when it comes to deploying VR. "We consider training part of marketing and sales," said Llamas. As for simulation, retailers, realtors and other vendors have long offered virtual tours of goods and property.

On the training side, niche solutions abound. For example, a company called Interplay Learning has developed a "VR-in-a-Box" application that helps train solar and HVAC workers how to operate and repair the equipment. To keep costs more manageable and encourage trials, the company offers a lease program for as little as $125 per month.

"It's like going on a field trip where you can explore and learn as you go," company CEO Doug Donovan told eWEEK.

Industry analyst Tim Bajarin told eWEEK that VR (as well as the related augmented and mixed reality technologies) has found its most success in niche areas. While headgear is typically required, Bajarin said one of the most impressive VR demos he's seen simulates a heart surgery procedure in 3D by a company called zSpace.

In a later session, Elizabeth Baron, a VR and Advanced Visualization Tech Specialist at Ford, gave an overview of how the automaker VR efforts have evolved over the past thirty years. In the early days, the technology simply wasn't good enough to let the company virtually display some of the finer details of its cars, Baron said.

But more recent advances let its researchers see precise representations of both the exterior and interior of cars, including all the engine parts. Researchers can interact with these models in real time to perform a wide range of tests from usability to material tolerances. It can even simulate how long the window takes to defrost, she said.

"We need (the VR model) to be accurate so you are feeling like you are in the vehicle," and the VR simulation has to be responsive, she said.

For Ford, VR is an immersive social experience. As one user wearing a VR headset interacts with a vehicle, other researchers can see what she sees on their own screens. "We can get a globally distributed team working together and get everyone's collaboration," said Baron. "You might be in Palo Alto, Dearborn, Michigan or Melbourne, Australia."

As interest and development of VR increases the question of how mainstream it will become remains. "In medicine we don't like to use the terms killer app," joked panelist Walter Greenleaf, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who has worked with VR technology for decades. "But that's something that will help this industry take off."

Greenleaf said there are plenty of opportunities in the medical field alone. "In medicine there are some things we can't address without VR," he said

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Virtual Reality Inching Closer to Delivering Value to Enterprises

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SAN FRANCISCO-Some of virtual reality's biggest boosters shared words of caution at the recent VRX Conference and Expo here on Dec. 7-8. "We don't want to mad rush this technology and say it solves everything," said Frank Soqui,general manager of virtual reality and gaming at Intel.

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How it connects us and tears us apart

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CLOSE

Physicist Stephen Hawking is again raising the alarm that humankind needs to shape up if it hopes to survive.

In an interview with The Times, Hawking reiterated that humankind faces a slew of threats ranging from climate change to mass species extinction. He noted that technological advances have helped humans achieve seemingly insurmountable feats, but may also lead to our demise.

"Since civilization began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages," he told The Times. "It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason."

But despite the issues facing humankind, there may be hope for our survival, according to Hawking, but only if we all work together.

"We need to be quicker to identify such threats and act before they get out of control. This might mean some form of world government," he said.

What could possibly go wrong with a world government? You guessed it, a lot.

"But that [world government] might become a tyranny," he told The Times. "All this may sound a bit doom-laden but I am an optimist. I think the human race will rise to meet these challenges."

Hawking, who was recently given the honorary freedom of the City of London, also told The Times that he's happy with the life he's lived and is looking forward to the future.

"I travel widely, have been to Antarctica and have met the presidents of Korea, China, India, Ireland, Chile and the United States, as well as meeting four popes. I have been down in a submarine, and up on a zero gravity flight in preparation for the flight into space that I'm still hoping to make it on Virgin Galactic. It is a great time to be alive."

This isn't the first time the science superstar has suggested that humankind must get its act together. In the past, Hawking has suggested that humankind may only have 1,000 years left on Earth and will likely need to find another planet to occupy.
More coverage: Follow Mary Bowerman on Twitter: @MaryBowerman
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2nahJEZ

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Stephen Hawking: Technological advances 'may destroy us all'

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CLOSE Physicist Stephen Hawking is again raising the alarm that humankind needs to shape up if it hopes to survive. In an interview with The Times, Hawking reiterated that humankind faces a slew of threats ranging from climate change to mass species extinction.

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Where will we work then.

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Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and the rapid adoption of robots across diverse industries are stalking the fear of jobless growth. Responses to these developments have focused on what to do to ensure that robots don't steal jobs.

Bill Gates, for example, has called for the taxing of robots that take away jobs. This has elicited responses from leading economists, such as Larry Summers (former Vice President of Development Economics, Chief Economist of the World Bank, and US Treasury Department official) who argue against the idea saying that robots are job creators and that the idea of taxing them is profoundly flawed.

An equally questionable idea is to use universal basic income -the idea that everyone receives a minimum income regardless of circumstance-to redress the impact of technological unemployment.

The focus in these debates is misplaced. Jobs are not created or lost because of a single technology, but because of the business models designed to leverage the power of the technology. Uber, for example, may be called a "taxi-hailing app" service but the business is a constellation of applications including algorithms, the automobile and GPS-all of which are organised around a single business model.

We've seen a similar example in history, with recorded music in the last century. It wasn't the 1930s recording technology itself that threatened the jobs of live musicians. It was its combination with radio broadcasting, jukeboxes and the way businesses operated that led to job losses. Hotels, restaurants and bars replaced live musicians with jukeboxes. The coin-operated machines were cheaper and did not involve dealing with the demands of unionised musicians. A single recording could be played over and over without requiring the appearance of musicians.

As I argue, in "Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies", the early recording of music destroyed the jobs of some live musicians and undermined their claim to property rights. The social objections became largely about monopoly power and less about the technology itself.

The technology did make huge gains for the music industry because of its ability to access a wider section of society. Small bands and minority musicians who could not have access to large markets were able to use the technology to reach niche audiences. More importantly, the spread of the technology made it possible for new genres, such as bebop, of music to emerge and eventually enter mainstream markets.

However, while history helps us to learn from the past, it has become a poor guide for emerging trends. This is because of the qualitative differences between discrete technologies that defined the Industrial Revolution of the early 1800s and today's machines and platforms.

Different rules

These fundamental differences-between past automation activities and today's artificial intelligence-suggest the emergence of new economies operating under different rules whose contours are still sketchy.

The impacts will be strongly felt, given the integrated nature of the global economy, the rapid rate of technological change and the uncertainty created by technological abundance-which makes it difficult to predict where new ideas might come from.

Job creation-or loss-has to be considered in the context of the overall business.

This is best illustrated by looking at the difference between recorded music then and robots now. I have identified four big ones.

First, robots are being adopted at a much faster rate than recorded music was. Competitive pressures in industry are forcing entrepreneurs to look into deploying technological systems that enable them to stay ahead of the curve. Chinese manufacturers, for example, are responding to wage increases with one of the fastest rates of industrial robot adoption in the world.

Second, the consequences of robots are likely to be felt across global value networks triggering large-scale technological anxieties as workers fear that their jobs will be taken. This is partly because many of the leading industries rely on supply chains that are located in different regions and countries. Boeing, for example, sources parts from various parts of the US, Europe and many other parts of the world. Changes in its manufacturing practices involve coordination across those regions. This also applies to less complex products such as consumer goods.

Third, robots are advancing exponentially while human learning occurs at a much slower linear pace. Their rate of learning doubles in a short period while human learning is incremental and slow. This is partly a result of technological abundance and the growing ability for machines to teach each other how to improve the functioning of their algorithms. 3D printing, for example, is a combination of pre-existing mechanical technologies which now benefits from advances in digital technologies. It can now be diversely applied -from engineering to medicine. The more new technologies that are created, the greater the prospects of creating new applications. In many cases innovators start off with searching and using what already exists in novel ways before they invest in new research.

Finally, the effects of automation are likely to be felt over very short periods, compounding public concerns and leaving little room for adaptation. This is mainly because machines are reaching a point where they are learning to perform new tasks faster than workers can be retrained.

What next

What we need are inclusive social policies that take into account faster access to emerging technologies, greater support to new businesses and more open dialogue about how poverty and inequity amplify the negative effects of new technologies.

This requires a much deeper look at how social systems and technologies shape each other to create more just and resilient economies.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Jobs and Robots: Bracing for Technological Disruptions to Come

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Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and the rapid adoption of robots across diverse industries are stalking the fear of jobless growth. Responses to these developments have focused on what to do to ensure that robots don't steal jobs. Bill Gates, for example, has called for the taxing of robots that take away jobs.

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How they've changed us.

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Not too long ago, the internet was stationary. Most often, we'd browse the Web from a desktop computer in our living room or office. If we were feeling really adventurous, maybe we'd cart our laptop to a coffee shop. Looking back, those days seem quaint.

Today, the internet moves through our lives with us. We hunt Pokémon as we shuffle down the sidewalk. We text at red lights. We tweet from the bathroom. We sleep with a smartphone within arm's reach, using the device as both lullaby and alarm clock. Sometimes we put our phones down while we eat, but usually faceup, just in case something important happens.

Our iPhones, Androids and other smartphones have led us to effortlessly adjust our behavior. Portable technology has overhauled our driving habits, our dating styles and even our posture. Despite the occasional headlines claiming that digital technology is rotting our brains, not to mention what it's doing to our children, we've welcomed this alluring life partner with open arms and swiping thumbs.

Scientists suspect that these near-constant interactions with digital technology influence our brains. Small studies are turning up hints that our devices may change how we remember, how we navigate and how we create happiness - or not.

Somewhat limited, occasionally contradictory findings illustrate how science has struggled to pin down this slippery, fast-moving phenomenon. Laboratory studies hint that technology, and its constant interruptions, may change our thinking strategies. Like our husbands and wives, our devices have become "memory partners," allowing us to dump information there and forget about it - an off-loading that comes with benefits and drawbacks. Navigational strategies may be shifting in the GPS era, a change that might be reflected in how the brain maps its place in the world. Constant interactions with technology may even raise anxiety in certain settings.

Yet one large study that asked people about their digital lives suggests that moderate use of digital technology has no ill effects on mental well-being.

The question of how technology helps and hinders our thinking is incredibly hard to answer. Both lab and observational studies have drawbacks. The artificial confines of lab experiments lead to very limited sets of observations, insights that may not apply to real life, says experimental psychologist Andrew Przybylski of the University of Oxford. "This is a lot like drawing conclusions about the effects of baseball on players' brains after observing three swings in the batting cage."

Observational studies of behavior in the real world, on the other hand, turn up associations, not causes. It's hard to pull out real effects from within life's messiness. The goal, some scientists say, is to design studies that bring the rigors of the lab to the complexities of real life, and then to use the resulting insights to guide our behavior. But that's a big goal, and one that scientists may never reach.

Evolutionary neurobiologist Leah Krubitzer is comfortable with this scientific ambiguity. She doesn't put a positive or negative value on today's digital landscape. Neither good nor bad, it just is what it is: the latest iteration on the continuum of changing environments, says Krubitzer, of the University of California, Davis.

"I can tell you for sure that technology is changing our brains," she says. It's just that so far, no one knows what those changes mean.

Of course, nearly everything changes the brain. Musical training reshapes parts of the brain. Learning the convoluted streets of London swells a mapmaking structure in the brains of cabbies. Even getting a good night's sleep changes the brain. Every aspect of our environment can influence brain and behaviors. In some ways, digital technology is no different. Yet some scientists suspect that there might be something particularly pernicious about digital technology's grip on the brain.

"We are information-seeking creatures," says neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley of the University of California, San Francisco. "We are driven to it in very powerful ways." Today's digital tools give us unprecedented exposure to information that doesn't wait for you to seek it out; it seeks you out, he says. That pull is nearly irresistible.

Despite the many unanswered questions about whether our digital devices are influencing our brains and behaviors, and whether for good or evil, technology is galloping ahead. "We should have been asking ourselves [these sorts of questions] in the '70s or '80s," Krubitzer says. "It's too late now. We're kind of closing the barn doors after the horses got out."
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Attention grabber

One way in which today's digital technology is distinct from earlier advances (like landline telephones) is the sheer amount of time people spend with it. In just a decade, smartphones have saturated the market, enabling instant internet access to an estimated 2 billion people around the world. In one small study reported in 2015, 23 adults, ages 18 to 33, spent an average of five hours a day on their phones, broken up into 85 distinct daily sessions. When asked how many times they thought they used their phones, participants underestimated by half.

In a different study, Larry Rosen, a psychologist at California State University, Dominguez Hills, used an app to monitor how often college students unlocked their phones. The students checked their phones an average of 60 times a day, each session lasting about three to four minutes for a total of 220 minutes a day. That's a lot of interruption, Rosen says.

Smartphones are "literally omnipresent 24-7, and as such, it's almost like an appendage," he says. And often, we are compelled to look at this new, alluring rectangular limb instead of what's around us. "This device is really powerful," Rosen says. "It's really influencing our behavior. It's changed the way we see the world."

Technology does that. Printing presses, electricity, televisions and telephones all shifted people's habits drastically, Przybylski says. He proposes that the furor over digital technology melting brains and crippling social lives is just the latest incarnation of the age-old fear of change. "You have to ask yourself, 'Is there something magical about the power of an LCD screen?' " Przybylski says.

Yet some researchers suspect that there is something particularly compelling about this advance. "It just feels different. Computers and the internet and the cloud are embedded in our lives," says psychologist Benjamin Storm of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The scope of the amount of information we have at our fingertips is beyond anything we've ever experienced. The temptation to become really reliant on it seems to be greater."

Memory outsourcing

Our digital reliance may encourage even more reliance, at least for memory, Storm's work suggests. Sixty college undergraduates were given a mix of trivia questions - some easy, some hard. Half of the students had to answer the questions on their own; the other half were told to use the internet. Later, the students were given an easier set of questions, such as "What is the center of a hurricane called?" This time, the students were told they could use the internet if they wanted.

People who had used the internet initially were more likely to rely on internet help for the second, easy set of questions, Storm and colleagues reported online last July in Memory. "People who had gotten used to using the internet continued to do so, even though they knew the answer," Storm says. This kind of overreliance may signal a change in how people use their memory. "No longer do we just rely on what we know," he says.

That work builds on results published in a 2011 paper in Science. A series of experiments showed that people who expected to have access to the internet later made less effort to remember things. In this way, the internet has taken the place formerly filled by spouses who remember birthdays, grandparents who remember recipes and coworkers who remember the correct paperwork codes - officially known as "transactive memory partners."

"We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools," Betsy Sparrow, then at Columbia University, and colleagues wrote in 2011. "The experience of losing our internet connection becomes more and more like losing a friend. We must remain plugged in to know what Google knows."

That digital crutch isn't necessarily a bad thing, Storm points out. Human memory is notoriously squishy, susceptible to false memories and outright forgetting. The internet, though imperfect, can be a resource of good information. And it's not clear, he says, whether our memories are truly worse, or whether we perform at the same level, but just reach the answer in a different way.

"Some people think memory is absolutely declining as a result of us using technology," he says. "Others disagree. Based on the current data, though, I don't think we can really make strong conclusions one way or the other."

The potential downsides of this memory outsourcing are nebulous, Storm says. It's possible that digital reliance influences - and perhaps even weakens - other parts of our thinking. "Does it change the way we learn? Does it change the way we start to put information together, to build our own stories, to generate new ideas?" Storm asks. "There could be consequences that we're not necessarily aware of yet."

Research by Gazzaley and others has documented effects of interruptions and multitasking, which are hard to avoid with incessant news alerts, status updates and Instagrams waiting in our pockets. Siphoning attention can cause trouble for a long list of thinking skills, including short- and long-term memory, attention, perception and reaction time. Those findings, however, come from experiments in labs that ask a person to toggle between two tasks while undergoing a brain scan, for instance. Similar effects have not been as obvious for people going about their daily lives, Gazzaley says. But he is convinced that constant interruptions - the dings and buzzes, our own restless need to check our phones - are influencing our ability to think.

Making maps

Consequences of technology are starting to show up for another cognitive task - navigating, particularly while driving. Instead of checking a map and planning a route before a trip, people can now rely on their smartphones to do the work for them. Anecdotal news stories describe people who obeyed the tinny GPS voice that instructed them to drive into a lake or through barricades at the entrance of a partially demolished bridge. Our navigational skills may be at risk as we shift to neurologically easier ways to find our way, says cognitive neuroscientist Véronique Bohbot of McGill University in Montreal.

Historically, getting to the right destination required a person to have the lay of the land, a mental map of the terrain. That strategy takes more work than one that's called a "response strategy," the type of navigating that starts with an electronic voice command. "You just know the response - turn right, turn left, go straight. That's all you know," Bohbot says. "You're on autopilot."

Google begets Google

A response strategy is easier, but it leaves people with less knowledge. People who walked through a town in Japan with human guides did a better job later navigating the same route than people who had walked with GPS as a companion, researchers have found.

Scientists are looking for signs that video games, which often expose people to lots of response-heavy situations, influence how people get around. In a small study, Bohbot and colleagues found that people who average 18 hours a week playing action video games such as Call of Duty navigated differently than people who don't play the games. When tested on a virtual maze, players of action video games were more likely to use the simpler response learning strategy to make their way through, Bohbot and colleagues reported in 2015 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

That easier type of response navigation depends on the caudate nucleus, a brain area thought to be involved in habit formation and addiction. In contrast, nerve cells in the brain's hippocampus help create mental maps of the world and assist in the more complex navigation. Some results suggest that people who use the response method have bigger caudate nuclei, and more brain activity there. Conversely, people who use spatial strategies that require a mental map have larger, busier hippocampi.

Those results on video game players are preliminary and show an association within a group that may share potentially confounding similarities. Yet it's possible that getting into a habit of mental laxity may change the way people navigate. Digital technology isn't itself to blame, Bohbot says. "It's not the technology that's necessarily good or bad for our brain. It's how we use the technology," she says. "We have a tendency to use it in the way that seems to be easiest for us. We're not making the effort."

Parts of the brain, including those used to navigate, have many jobs. Changing one aspect of brain function with one type of behavior might have implications for other aspects of life. A small study by Bohbot showed that people who navigate by relying on the addiction-related caudate nucleus smoke more cigarettes, drink more alcohol and are more likely to use marijuana than people who rely on the hippocampus. What to make of that association is still very much up in the air.

Sweating the smartphone

Other researchers are trying to tackle questions of how technology affects our psychological outlooks. Rosen and colleagues have turned up clues that digital devices have become a new source of anxiety for people.

In diabolical experiments, Cal State's Rosen takes college students' phones away, under the ruse that the devices are interfering with laboratory measurements of stress, such as heart rate and sweating. The phones are left on, but placed out of reach of the students, who are reading a passage. Then, the researchers start texting the students, who are forced to listen to the dings without being able to see the messages or respond. Measurements of anxiety spike, Rosen has found, and reading comprehension dwindles.

Other experiments have found that heavy technology users last about 10 minutes without their phones before showing signs of anxiety.

Fundamentally, an interruption in smartphone access is no different from those in the days before smartphones, when the landline rang as you were walking into the house with bags full of groceries, so you missed the call. Both situations can raise anxiety over a connection missed. But Rosen suspects that our dependence on digital technology causes these situations to occur much more often.

"The technology is magnificent," he says. "Having said that, I think that this constant bombardment of needing to check in, needing to be connected, this feeling of 'I can't be disconnected, I can't cut the tether for five minutes,' that's going to have a long-term effect."

The question of whether digital technology is good or bad for people is nearly impossible to answer, but a survey of 120,000 British 15-year-olds (99.5 percent reported using technology daily) takes a stab at it. Oxford's Przybylski and Netta Weinstein at Cardiff University in Wales have turned up hints that moderate use of digital technology - TV, computers, video games and smartphones - correlates with good mental health, measured by questions that asked about happiness, life satisfaction and social activity.

When the researchers plotted technology use against mental well-being, an umbrella-shaped curve emerged, highlighting what the researchers call the "Goldilocks spot" of technology use  - not too little and not too much.

"We found that you've got to do a lot of texting before it hurts," Przybylski says. For smartphone use, the shift from benign to potentially harmful came after about two hours of use on weekdays, mathematical analyses revealed. Weekday recreational computer use had a longer limit: four hours and 17 minutes, the researchers wrote in the February Psychological Science.
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For even the heaviest users, the relationship between technology use and poorer mental health wasn't all that strong. For scale, the potential negative effects of all that screen time was less than a third of the size of the positive effects of eating breakfast, Przybylski and Weinstein found.

Even if a relationship is found between technology use and poorer mental health, scientists still wouldn't know why, Przybylski says. Perhaps the effect comes from displacing something, such as exercise or socializing, and not the technology itself.

We may never know just how our digital toys shape our brains. Technology is constantly changing, and fast. Our brains are responding and adapting to it.

"The human neocortex basically re-creates itself over successive generations," Krubitzer says. It's a given that people raised in a digital environment are going to have brains that reflect that environment. "We went from using stones to crack nuts to texting on a daily basis," she says. "Clearly the brain has changed."

It's possible that those changes are a good thing, perhaps better preparing children to succeed in a fast-paced digital world. Or maybe we will come to discover that when we no longer make the effort to memorize our best friend's phone number, something important is quietly slipping away.

This article appears in the April 1, 2017, issue of Science News with the headline, "Digital minds: Are smartphones changing our brains?"

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Smartphones may be changing the way we think

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Not too long ago, the internet was stationary. Most often, we'd browse the Web from a desktop computer in our living room or office. If we were feeling really adventurous, maybe we'd cart our laptop to a coffee shop. Looking back, those days seem quaint. Today, the internet moves through our lives with us.

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The world is becoming overly dependent on AI.

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Commentary

Engaging traditionally underrepresented students in AI development is essential

AI is the Terminator. AI is coming for your job. AI is taking over the world. If we compiled all the headlines about artificial intelligence from the last year, we'd have a picture of a dystopian world where jobs are scarce and AI and automation rule everything we do. In this scenario, millions of people are impacted by AI and autonomous systems created with little regard for their consequences: They are deployed in unethical ways, riddled with errors and bias, and discriminatory. The obscurity of how AI works and where it's used result in fear and confusion. And the few who still have jobs are far wealthier and more powerful than everyone else.

But there's another story that doesn't often get catchy headlines. Imagine a world where AI supports and improves our human capabilities. Algorithms and the data sets used to train them are open and transparent, giving users control and democratizing access. AI and automation work alongside humans to help teachers personalize curricula for students who learn in different ways, enable doctors to make more specific medical diagnoses, and give the elderly and people with disabilities mobility through assistive robotics. And forward-thinking and proactive policies address the potentially problematic effects these new technologies may have on our lives.

Read more from the collection.
This second future is not the path we're on now-at least not yet. In order to get there, we need to take direct and urgent action collectively to address how AI is developed, tested, and deployed.

A relatively homogenous group of people are the current creators, researchers, and builders of AI. One consequence of this homogeneity is that AI systems unintentionally reflect or amplify unconscious societal biases. We see this already in racially biased risk-assessment software in prisons (which rate the likelihood of black people committing future crimes as higher than white people), language-translation software with gender bias (such as translating doctors as men and teachers as women), and face-recognition software that has trouble reading nonwhite faces. As we incorporate AI into our daily lives through health care, transportation, and financial and social services, opaque algorithms have the potential to perpetuate the power and wealth inequalities we already face.

This is precisely why AI consumers-that means all of us-must be involved in creating and shaping AI for the future. And that starts when we develop students' interest and experience in AI at a young age. By bringing diverse experiences and viewpoints into software and project creation, we'll see more innovative and creative outputs that better meet the changing needs of our country. At this point, only about 40 percent of U.S. schools nationwide report offering computer science courses. African-American and Hispanic students made up only around 4 percent and 9 percent of test-takers in Advanced Placement computer science, respectively, in 2014. And girls make up only 27 percent of students who took computer science tests in 2017.

But education, mentorship, and outreach programs for underrepresented youths can make a big difference. At the San Francisco Bay Area-based organization AI4ALL (which I lead), we partner with AI labs at universities, such as Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Stanford, and University of California, Berkeley, to introduce high school students to computer science concepts and skills. It only takes a few weeks of basic training before students are ready to apply concepts to humanitarian projects with help from professors. Some students have worked on projects to make hospitals safer using computer vision to identify hand germs, used natural-language processing on Twitter to find people in need of natural-disaster relief, and made driving safer and more accessible through designing autonomous cars.

Since the organization began in March, at least one-third of our more than 100 alumni have gone on to create their own AI programs in their communities, including teaching AI and computer science to middle schoolers from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in STEM, running girls' AI clubs, and hosting AI art workshops. Alumni of the program will also have access to ongoing support from peer and mentor networks as they continue their education and move into careers. For students of color and girls, having diverse mentors in the field plays an important role in showing them what is possible. Ours is not the only effort being made. Other education-based approaches-Code2040, the CSforAll Consortium, TEALS, and the College Board's new AP computer science principles course-are also working to bridge gender and diversity gaps in coding and computer science through funding and after-school and summer programs.

There isn't just one inevitable future for us. Making the latest developments in disruptive technology accessible to all is critical for taking control of our 21st-century lives. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee write in The Second Machine Age, "technology is not destiny." Let's not wait until AI's problems become even more expensive and difficult to address. As educators, policymakers, technologists, and technology users, we can all play an active role in ensuring that a future full of artificial intelligence is actually intelligent. Let's act while there's still time.

Published in Print: December 13, 2017, as AI's Future Is in the Hands of Those Who Create It

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Preventing an Artificial-Intelligence Fueled Dystopia, One Student at a Time

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Commentary AI is the Terminator. AI is coming for your job. AI is taking over the world. If we compiled all the headlines about artificial intelligence from the last year, we'd have a picture of a dystopian world where jobs are scarce and AI and automation rule everything we do.

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We don’t even know it.

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We let technology into our lives. And now it’s starting to control us | Rachel Holmes

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Internet giants are accessing vast amounts of personal data and using it to shape our behaviour. It’s reminiscent of East Germany under the Stasi

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But should we not let them to protect them.

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Your home is a safe space, for you and your kids. It's a place where you can all switch off from the outside world, forget about everything and everyone and the only people allowed in are the ones you invite.

At least, it used to be.

But we now live in a time when everyone we know, and a whole stack of people we don't know, are invited into our homes every day. It's called the internet and social media.

This intrusion into the safe space of our homes is affecting our kids, and it's time that us parents step up to help them manage it.
Technology in kids' bedrooms: a bad idea
What happens to devices at night-time is a big issue for families. Should your child be allowed to play games or chat to friends online, in bed, until they fall asleep? Or should there be a cut-off time, when devices are put down?

Well, you can't argue with science. One study found that kids who use devices at bedtime sleep less, get poorer quality sleep and are more tired during the day than kids who switch off earlier.

And it gets more interesting: further research says it isn't just using the devices that interrupts sleep. Even kids who have a phone or tablet device in their room - without using it at bedtime or during the night - still had that bad quality of sleep.

So you can forget blue-light filtered glasses or switching off the wi-fi to save your kids' sleep. Simply having a device in their bedroom is keeping them awake.
What's good for the kids is good for the adults
I asked my nine-year-old about a "no technology in bedrooms" rule and she said, "Sure, but adults should follow that rule, too".

She's far from the only kid to see a double-standard. Last year, a US survey of 249 families asked the kids (aged between 10 and 17) their thoughts on household technology rules. Hypocrisy was one of the big issues they raised.

"While parents tended not to be concerned about different rules for parents and children, many kids saw that as hypocritical," the report says. "Children also found it easier to follow household technology rules when families had developed them collectively and when parents lived by them as well."

It's a widely considered best practice approach to parenting: model the behaviour you want your kids to follow. So, we too need to switch off during some parts of the day and all of the night, if we want our kids to develop healthy technology habits.
There are more issues at play
We are a generation of parents who grew up without having these factors at play; it's fair to say that we don't truly understand what it's like to be a teenager in this technology age.

A friend's pre-teen son told me recently that not responding to a message quickly is a social disaster. "If you don't reply within five minutes, your friend thinks you hate them and you're up for a big argument the next day."

Another friend's teenage daughter said, "If you put up a post and it doesn't get a certain number of likes within half an hour, then you have to take it down. Otherwise you're going to get teased at school the next day."

Our kids are sitting at home (which should be their safe places), worrying about whether their actions that night are going to have huge social repercussions the next day.

And we have no idea they have these pressures on them - unless, of course, we chat with them. You can't do that if they're locked away in their bedroom with their face in a screen until midnight.
The elephant in the room
The issue of technology in bedrooms goes even further - and this is one that many parents want to ignore. It's just too scary for words, but let's try.

"You need to keep electronic devices out of bedrooms for your child's safety," says digital parenting expert Ruth Dearing from Children and Technology. "Child exploitation and image abuse is now affecting one in five Australians; it's a massive problem and it's one that ruins lives."

"While your child can easily take a nude image of themselves in their bedroom behind a closed door, they aren't likely to take the same image in the middle of your lounge room!"

Kids in their rooms, with the whole big world of the internet at their fingertips, is bad news.

It's not a matter of trusting your child; it's a matter of being aware that bad judgment calls can easily be made, and that not every person in the internet is a good person - from online predators to school bullies.

I'm not suggesting that devices or social media are the devils in our children's once innocent lives.

But I'm aiming for my home to be a safe space for my children and I think you should too.

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Why kids shouldn't have devices in their bedrooms

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Your home is a safe space, for you and your kids. It's a place where you can all switch off from the outside world, forget about everything and everyone and the only people allowed in are the ones you invite. At least, it used to be.