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Volume CXV
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Issue 5
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Featured:
• Las Vegas Shooting • • Men of Color Luncheon • Garba • • Yahoo security breach • • House of ‘Que • Freshman Debate •
HISTORY
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Friday, October 6, 2017
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Recent Stevens alumni named finalists in Collegiate Inventors Competition by ELINA TUDER Staff Writer
KSA Chuseok • P6
Hall Brawls • P7
Stigma Free Week • P8
Every year, the National Inventors Hall of Fame sponsors the Collegiate Inventors Competition. What is remarkable about the 2017 competition is that Stevens team was named as one of the six undergraduate team finalists in the nation for their senior design project, CerebroSense. The seniors involved in the project were Maria De Abreu Pineda, Andrew Falcone, and David Ferrara, under the guidance of their project advisors, biomedical engineering professor Dr. Vikki Hazelwood and Dr. Glen Atlas, an anesthesiologist at UMDNJ in Rutgers. The seniors decided on this project after Dr. Glen Atlas explained brain pulsatility; the brain’s change in radius due to swelling, trauma, and other sudden changes, which is currently measured by surgeons placing a finger on the patient’s exposed brain and then deciding whether they believe the brain’s radius is changing
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and whether any immediate action is required. This practice leaves a copious amount of space for human error and can take up to 10 minutes. This can prevent a full recovery since the brain should not be without oxygen for more than two minutes, and it can cause complications after surgery. Team member Andrew Falcone said, “When the team heard this, we immediately said that there needed to be a better way to do this, as it baffled us that there was not a piece of technology to improve
The President’s Distinguished Lecture Series: Is Artificial Intelligence Good or Evil? by ANGELINA ZACCARIA Staff Writer
On Wednesday, Oct. 4 at 4 p.m., Dr. Oren Etzioni, the Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, gave a lecture called “Is Artificial Intelligence Good or Evil?” as a part of The President’s Distinguished Lecture Series. He is a professor at the University of Washington, and he received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991 and his B.A. from Harvard in 1986 as Harvard’s first-ever student to concentrate in Computer Science. Dr. Etzioni’s lecture was focused on what A.I. really is, as opposed to common perceptions perpetuated by science fiction, as well as possible ways to solve ethical issues stemming from artificial intelligence development. Dr. Etzioni emphasized that intelligence and autonomy are two very different things. This is an especially important distinction with regard to applications of A.I. in weapons. He described A.I. weapons that can fly halfway across the world and kill someone as “the stuff of nightmares,” but pointed out that “the nightmare has to do with the autonomy. It’s very scary to have a weapon that can make a life or
death decision without a human in the loop. Intelligence is not the problem – it’s autonomy. Intelligence in weapons can actually prevent mistakes like we’ve had and do have when civilians have been killed.” He stressed the importance of avoiding not intelligent weapons, but autonomous ones. Although many people are frightened by the idea of autonomous A.I., most artificial intelligence is not autonomous, only intelligent. Dr. Etzioni said that his seven-year-old is more autonomous than any A.I., and that “to understand what is harmful and what is not really requires common sense, and remarkably, that is one of the hardest things for us to give to the machine. There really are no machines today with even a modicum of common sense.” Dr. Etzioni argued that trying to slow down A.I. development in the U.S. will only lead to other countries such as China overtaking us. Therefore, we should attempt to guide the direction and guidelines of this rapidly developing field. He suggests that instead of attempting to regulate the field itself, we should regulate its applications, namely in cars, toys, and robots. Self-driving cars need to be regulated due to the risk to human life,
and A.I. toys could pose a threat to privacy without regulation – Etzioni gave the example of information a child might tell to an A.I. Barbie. He presented three rules that he believes should govern A.I. regarding legal responsibility, full disclosure, and privacy. If someone’s self-driving intelligent car crashes into someone else’s car, they still have responsibility. Just as “My dog ate my homework” is not a valid excuse, neither is “My A.I. did it.” Dr. Etzioni was adamant that an A.I. should disclose that it is not human so as to avoid fooling people online into believing that an A.I. is a real person. Privacy is a huge issue with A.I. because it has
the capacity to gather large amounts of data that must be used responsibly. For instance, when someone doesn’t want to see a Google Ad anymore, one of the options for telling Google why he or she doesn’t like it is “ad knew too much.” Dr. Etzioni also explained that a major issue in the development of A.I. is that it can easily pick up on and amplify human bias in its training data because it attempts to compress data to generalize and help it make future decisions. Dr. Etzioni’s answer to the question “Is Artificial Intelligence Good or Evil?” was simple: A.I. is neither good nor evil. It’s a tool, and the choice is ours.
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upon the monolithic way of measuring pulsatility for a surgery that pertains to one of the most complex organs of the body”. There are currently approximately 160,000 open-brain surgeries in the US per year, and roughly 20% of those result in complications, which is detrimental to a patient’s health and finances. Complications cost up to an additional $2 billion annually. The team was determined to develop a device that would provide accurate measurements within 60 seconds, de-
crease the pervasiveness of surgical complications, and lower costs. CerebroSense can be brought into the operating room and be pointed at the brain from two to twenty inches away, never mandating physical contact. The device then projects sound waves towards the brain and completes the measurements in 30 to 60 seconds with an accuracy of less than 0.3 millimeters. Although the group has already won first place at
see FINALIST• Page 7
Freshman SGA Senator candidates debate by MARK KRUPINSKI Business Manager
Twenty freshman senator candidates crowded the front of Burchard 118 on Monday, Oct. 2, for a debate to attempt to convince their fellow classmates why they should be elected to one of nine freshman senator positions available. The debate was moderated by Olivia Schreiber, chair of the Stevens Honor Board, and a member of the Stevens election committee. Members of the Student Government Association (SGA) developed questions to be asked at the debate. Each question was approved by Schreiber. The questions in the debate encompassed four topics: The Role of the SGA, The First Year Experience, School Spirit, and Academics. Due to the number of candidates, the freshmen were split into four groups of five candidates. Each group was asked two questions and had one minute to respond. Following that, there was a two-minute rebuttal period following the responses. Then, the debate was opened for questions from the audience. The first group to debate included James Fong, an electrical engineering major who stated his previous experience in JROTC would help him, Tamer Asfar, a
Quantitative Finance major who had already attended two SGA meetings, Elina Tuder, a computer science major involved with The Stute and The Link, Matthew Cunningham, a computer science major who writes a weekly column in The Stute, and Julia Meyn, a naval engineering major who is involved with SITTV. The first question asked the candidates how all students, particularly transfer and commuter students, should be welcomed to campus during freshman orientation. All of the candidates agreed that it is difficult for everyone to integrate between groups during freshman orientation. James and Elina both noted that club meetings at night are a problem and suggested that more clubs should meet in the middle of the day. Matthew stated it was important to note that there is a difference in how transfer and commuter student should be treated as they have different hardships. Second, the candidates were asked, “As Stevens is the innovation university, how should innovation and entrepreneurship be fostered at Stevens?” Matthew stated that getting involved with research and entrepreneurship should be emphasized more during orientation. Additionally, Matthew,
see DEBATE • Page 6