Final Course Reflection

 This class was really interesting as someone who is preparing to work in video games. It was interesting to see how technology trends can affect society and how the adoptions of technology can make or break progress and influence where advancements in technology are made.

    One thing I noticed that was super interesting is that when it came to trends you could see people being broken down into sub groups such as early adopters and late majority. What influences what group people fall into is that it depends entirely on finances and what people are interested in, new technology tends to be more expensive which can be a deterrent when it comes to picking up certain technologies as they may not be different enough to justify price or they may be too new to appeal to a majority of people. The struggle that comes from knowing how to have a justified and profitable price while still making the price appealing can make or break a lot of technology. 

The long tail theory is an explanation of the business strategy to focus on less available niche products. Long tail theory can be applied to things like art supply companies who specialize in high quality art supplies of a specific type such as pastels or oil paints. This limits the kinds of products they can sell but allows them to specialize and produce high quality and specialty items that their competitors may be unable or unwilling to produce, allowing for a sustainable business practice once the business has found an established customer base.

A social issue that has arisen and is something that most people are familiar with is the theft of creative works and deep fakes that have risen in popularity because of the ease and power that artificial intelligence has. People have been seen using AI to back up fake news or ruin other people’s reputations. 

Artificial Intelligence as it has suddenly blossomed into the cultural atmosphere outside of simple video game AI and spell checking software has no policies that can manage it or protect those negatively affected by it when it comes to the theft and reproduction of their creative works such as artwork or deep fakes in the way of revenge porn. AI has become so easily accessed and powerful that the average person doesn’t necessarily know that an AI generated image is AI generated. The average person would have to scrutinize every image they come across and not everyone has the time, mental energy, or knowledge to know what to look for when trying to see if an image is AI generated. As AI technology learns and develops, it also learns from its mistakes learning how to create more realistic images with less of the obvious and immediate tells of it being a fully AI generated image. 

We learned several different things over the course of this semester and how technology can succeed or fail. It was rather interesting and allowed me to view technology differently and see how advancements in technology can affect the field of video games.