Blog 2: Lecture 15 - Design That Matters I ​

Post-Lecture Thoughts and Reflection ​

Thank you Lyel for your really interesting and thought-provoking lecture today!

I thought that today's discussion was very insightful and highlighted the importance of evaluating the impact of a technology before it is deployed to the masses. Due to how quickly a technology can be shared with such a vast audience, it is crucial to deeply consider many aspects of that technology's use and the resulting impact this use might have on our society.

As discussed during lecture, in this day-and-age, it is so easy to scale a technology/innovation to reach hundreds of thousands of people. A potentially massively impactful development can turn the world on its head in a matter of days or weeks as opposed to decades, so it is hugely important to spend a lot of time thoroughly investigating and evaluating the impacts a new technology might have.

ChatGPT, for example, launched onto the scenes with incredible growth and rapid adoption. In fact, it was the fastest user-base to grow from 0 to 100 million active users in history at the time, taking roughly two months to hit this incredible milestone. For context, it took TikTok nine months to reach 100 million users, and Instagram over 2.5 years. Crazily enough, this record was absolutely demolished by the launch of Threads (Meta's version of Twitter) this past summer. It took Threads just 5 days to reach 100 million users. In a world where 100 million people (or roughly 1.25% of the global population) can all be using the same application that wasn't publicly available only days prior, the necessity for companies to do their due diligence and truly consider the impacts of these said technologies is a massively important undertaking.

Building off of the ChatGPT example, this form of AI has proven to be a massively transformative innovation. ChatGPT was launched on November 30, 2022 (side note, I was shocked to learn that ChatGPT has only been out for LESS THAN A YEAR). Since then, it has built new industries, has changed the way people (and lawyers) research information, has redirected where and how venture capitalists distribute their funds, and has led to an AI frenzy in students at universities around the world. These are just a few examples of ChatGPT's impact on society, but even these things have serious and significant repercussions that will impact our future.

Questions A Technologist Should Consider ​

These are just a couple of the questions I think developers should ask themselves before deploying a technology to the masses. I believe that it is important to think about these questions and have answers to some of these before releasing an invention for the rest of the world to use.