CS220AU Digital Portfolio

Overview

This GitHub repository is the assignment for the CS220AU course in 2022. It demonstrates minimalistic ideas for

• project management
• web hosting with GitHub Pages
• web-design with Markdown language and
• evaluation with the assessment.md and the dp-checklist.md files.

The URL of the website can be found in the sidebar, under 'About'.
The homepage uses the information in the index.md file.
The research question to be answered with the help of this portfolio is: How are digital identities connected to existential risks? In order to answer this question, this portfolio will look at digital identities, existential risks and their interrelationship with a within this research developed focus on AI and politics.

Findings

Digital identity is essentially any personal data existing online that can be traced back to the real you (blog.avast.com). Existential risks are a complex topic, as there are entire papers that only deal with the definition of “existential risks”, but in general one could say that an existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development. Examples are nuclear war, biotechnology and genetics and artificial intelligence. Most interesting and for me also most important was the risk of AI, as it’s a field that’s made significant strides in recent years. Artificial intelligence is a constellation of many different technologies working together to enable machines to sense, comprehend, act, and learn with human-like levels of intelligence. It is used already in many different ways in our daily life and can be differentiated in three stages: Artificial narrow (or “weak”) Intelligence, Artificial general (or “strong”) Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence. Right now I am at the point where it cannot be said that AI in general poses an existential risk, but only the most extreme part of it: the Artificial Superintelligence…

… But I have the thesis, that even “normal” AI can pose a threat to humanity if it is abused for example in politics. This is also the state of research I am currently working on (see Blogpost 6 - AI as an indirect Influence on Existential Risks).
I do have already some thoughts about the connection between digital identities and the existential risk of AI but it still has to be worked out with literature and a blog post created. My thesis is that because AI learns from existing patterns, we can influence learning and thus the effects of AI with our digital identities and our online behavior - both positively and negatively.

Portfolio items

This portfolio contains the following:

1. website exploring digital identities, existential risks and critical thinking
2. self-and peer-assessment using the marking rubric in the assessment.md file & the personal development page on my website
3. portfolio overview providing a succinct overview of the portfolio, an outline of completed tasks (Log) and tasks to do (ToDo) in this README.md file.

Log

• 2023-01-17: feedback from Ayah, entered some small changes, nothing big, filled out the peer feedback table
• 2023-01-18: gave Ayah feedback to webpage & her video
• 2023-01-17: submitted my work on FASER
• 2023-01-13: got feedback from my parents as my peer feedback partner did not respond yet and time is running out; It was very exciting to hear the opinions of outsiders on the subject!!
• 2023-01-10: finally fixed the image-problem!!
• 2023-01-09: created overview / findings, small changes (feedback from Krisz), still problems with embedding images, self-assessment
• 2022-12-13: finished blogpost 5 (asi), started blogpost 6 (ai in politics)
• 2022-12-13: in class: feedback with Krisz, smaller changes (capitalizing, images, ...), updated index site, found a solution for bullet lists
• 2022-12-08: created blogpost 4 (AI), updated index page
• 2022-12-07: restructuring the old blogposts, as they still can be part of my webpage; updated index page, created blogposts 1 (basics), 2 (digital identities), 3 (existential risks), 0 (personal development) and the index page
• 2022-12-07: again chat with Krisz, now I have a deeper understanding of what I want to do
• 2022-12-06: Feedback with Krisz, talking through new topic, collected some ideas
• 2022-12-06: feedback with Mahati, i have to restructure everything!!! no more overviewy things, more a specific risk -> decided on AI in politics
• 2022-11-24: decided on a new webpage template, first steps with that, implemented some contents already, still struggling with embedding images, started with overview DI-ER
• 2022-11-19: created some more content, digitized VR map
• 2022-11-15: seminar, my presentation, feedback on others presentations, found a peer-feedback partner: aya :), chatted with Krisz about webpage layout template, feedback on VR-map
• 2022-11-13: prepared presentation
• 2022-11-08: class content: content production; after class ASH: heads up with Krisz
• 2022-11-07: created & digitized my VR map (still need some feedback!), big website session: website introduction, step 0: basics, step 1: digital identities; figured out that i need my own organisation system (just a word document)
• 2022-10-28: updated portfolio overview, still needs to be filled with content, when website is done; selected a research question
• 2022-10-25: feedback from Krisz, talked about project management
• 2022-10-24: prepared tomorrow's seminar, added notes from week 2+3, thought about website structure & created files for each page, updated log & todo
• 2022-10-18: created the github account, private repository, public repository; in general: first steps with github
• 2022-10-11: introduction into the module, VR method, watching the videos

ToDo

general

• finish blogpost 6: ai as indirect influence on er / AI in politics
• create more?
• peer-feedback
• …
  

questions @krisz

• images not shown