I have been working on several group projects this semester, but it hasn’t been an easy process. Some of my groups are great. We communicate clearly and regularly and finish our work without being rushed – other groups, not so much. This predicament has caused me to develop a great disdain for group projects.

It is important to point out that a group project differs from working in a team in many ways. Ideally, they are the same. In reality, a group operates very differently from the way a team and business does in the real world.

To work on a team, you must first join the team. When you work for an employer, you have chosen that place of business as a place you want to work, and they have chosen you as someone they want to work
for. It is a two-way street. In many of my group projects, I was not given a choice. Most of them were randomly assigned with no option to work individually. I would not prefer to do these projects individually, but I would like the opportunity to choose my team. Additionally, group projects in an academic setting encourage procrastination and laziness. If your group is not working as a team, you have unwittingly entered a more complicated version of the saying “take or steal.” 

If everyone in your group does some work, then everyone benefits from its early completion and good grades. However, if everyone holds out, they all secretly hope that someone else will do the hard work; they can benefit from the work getting done while all they have to do is convert the document to a PDF.

This dilemma encourages everyone in the group to wait until the last minute to do anything. You know the feeling. The group chat is dry until the day before the project is due, and you and your group quickly scramble to get something together. When you work on a team, the game theory economic problem is minimized. 

Firstly, if teammates chose to join the team, more people want to be there to get their part of the work done. Additionally, team members are judged individually, not as an entire group with one singular output.

Consider a soccer game where one player scores a hat trick, but their team still loses the match. You would say that the individual player played well, but maybe their team’s defense was lacking. Similarly, in the workplace and with hiring, others judge you by how you contribute to the team, not the final output.

Another problem with group projects is that there is rarely enough time to create enough structure to work as a team. Any team you join will likely have some form of structure. 

Consider how a sports team has their coach, assistant coaches, a captain, several players in different roles, a
manager and trainers. 

That is comparable to a supervisor, your HR representative and your coworker’s seniority at work. Additionally, when you enter the team, you know the role you are entering. 

Take, for example, this very newspaper. At the Technique, we have staff writers, assistant editors, section editors, photographers and an editor-in-chief. Everyone knows their role and what they must produce for the paper to be published each Friday. When I started writing, I knew the exact format and hierarchy of the team
I was joining.

These roles take time to form and often shift over the years as a company conducts business, but there needs to be more time to form this structure in a group project. 

When you are in a group project with peers, assigning someone in a dominant role who can command the group is frowned upon.

Some professors and educators argue that group projects prepare you for the real world by teaching you how to work with people, but a group project is very different from the real world. Students can learn several useful communication skills from a group project that can carry over to the real world, but working on a group project is different from working in a team. If professors want students to be the best prepared for working on a team in a business setting, I suggest a few things. 

Firstly, allow students to choose their partners and to work alone if they prefer; the students typically know best who they can work with and who has a similar work ethic. Secondly, make group projects on a longer time scale, like an entire semester rather than a couple of weeks. 

This shift will allow the groups to form a deeper bond and build a structure that will allow them to work as a team.

Finally, create roles for a team or have the creation of roles as a minor part of the assignment. Then, professors can grade each individual on how well they completed their role independent of the outcome. This change would eliminate most of the problems I have discussed and make group projects more like a true real-world team.

The post The commonplace struggle with group projects appeared first on Technique.

The modern world is becoming ever more dependent on artificial intelligence (AI), but there are potential philosophical issues that come with the increasing use of AI. On Sept. 28, the GT Ethics, Technology and Human Interaction Center (ETHICx) hosted a gathering focused on just that. 

According to the ETHICx website, the center was founded in collaboration with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the College of Computing and works to provide a space to connect discussions of the ethics of technology across campus. At the event, guest speaker Liran Razinsky, senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University in Israel, presented his views on the popular notion that AI algorithms know humans better than they know themselves. 

During the event, Razinsky took the position that AI will never be able to understand the intricacies and complexities of humans, arguing that algorithms do not have the full depth and complexity of humans’ knowledge.

“Algorithmic knowledge is that of a distinctly different kind to human knowledge. We can’t compare algorithmic knowledge to self-knowledge,” Razinsky said.

The complexity of human interpretations of the world, according to Razinsky, is a result of humans using all of their past experiences to interpret new stimuli. 

Razinsky explained that, unlike an AI system, two humans could have the same experience and walk away with a different explanation of the event; he chalks this up to the human condition.

Additionally, Razinsky spoke about how humans take time for reflection and interpretation after receiving a question, unlike AI, which returns its responses almost instantly after receiving data. Razinsky said that due to these factors, “AI fails to sense an inner perspective that we have of ourselves,” and therefore, does not surpass the bar of knowing humans better than they know themselves. He also believes that AI will never expand to this level of knowledge partly because of the human inability to fully understand ourselves.

In Razinsky’s view, every human lacks complete self-knowledge, making humans distinct from AI. For example, humans often do not know the source of their emotions and fail to recognize their own omissions of information in their thoughts. In a way, the failure to completely understand ourselves is a part of who we are, according to Razinsky.

“The absence of full self-awareness characterizes each human. Our individual uniqueness is rooted in our own blindspots,” said Razinsky, on humanity. He concluded his presentation by saying, “algorithms will never know us completely, even if we barely know ourselves at all.”

The Technique spoke to Micheal Hoffmann, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of ETHICx, about this event and what ETHICx is doing to promote ethics across campus.

“Ethics is an issue many people have to deal with and are happy to deal with, but what’s missing is some forum for communication and exchange,” Hoffmann said.

Hoffmann and others associated with ETHICx are also involved in several different AI projects across campus, including the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE), the National AI Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT) and The AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING).

“We have three AI institutes headquartered here at Georgia Tech, which means the discussion within ETHICx developed into artificial intelligence,” Hoffmann said on the projects’ roles.

ETHICx addresses many challenges directed at promoting diversity and inclusion in AI. Additionally, there are privacy and security issues when AI systems collect large amounts of data.

Beyond these more well-known issues that designers need to consider when implementing AI technology, Hoffmann and the other ETHICx members want to address more niche topics.

“Not only do we have an internal ethical analysis, but we are also organizing stakeholder engagement meetings to learn what the impacts of the technology are on wellbeing: positive or negative,” Hoffmann said.

Hoffmann noted that implementing ethical policies in AI technology does not stifle innovation rather they compliment each other, as he explained, “I think it’s not slowing innovation because technology teams
 are interested in what we’re doing. The technology teams are getting feedback that was very hard to get. It’s a synergy.”

Looking to the future, Hoffmann expressed his belief in the good AI can do when used as a tool, but that it should continue to be monitored and regulated by humans for the forseeable future.

“I think it’s just a great tool, but it is important to observe what’s going on and ensure that nothing bad happens,” Hoffmann said.

ETHICx hopes to host more events in a similar manner to continue providing students, faculty and staff a place to discuss ethics issues as campus becomes increasingly involved in the development of AI technologies. 

Anyone looking to learn more about ETHICx and future events can find additional information on their operations at www.ethicxcenter.gatech.edu.

The post Liran Razinsky speaks ethics and AI over coffee appeared first on Technique.

The Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra (GTSO) opened its season on Thursday, Sept. 21, with a performance celebrating music inspired by literature. The program included works from composers Antonín Dvořák, Anna Clyne, Chihchun Chi-sun Lee and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Under the stage lights at the Ferst Center for the Arts, orchestral students used the opportunity to show their dedication to music and their mastery of instruments. With the instruction of their conductor, orchestra members played in unison — with precision and detail.

Orchestra members had been preparing for this concert since the beginning of the semester. Working on their pieces nearly every day, they honed their skills and trained their muscle memory for this one special night.

This year’s orchestra was led by conductor, Chaowen Ting, the Director of Orchestral Studies, who introduced each piece and the orchestra. The first piece performed at the concert was Dvořák’s “Othello Overture,” inspired by the Shakespearian tragedy “Othello.” Shakespeare’s work inspired many of the pieces performed. 

Ting chose this theme for the program to demonstrate how music can be an outlet for the emotions that literature elicits.

Ting wanted to draw attention to the number of compositions rooted in the themes of literary texts. “Having inspiration from literature is very common in [the] arts. You see paintings, you see dramas and you see films adapted from novels,” said Ting.

In reference to the power that music has to express emotions, Ting said, “it’s very humanistic. It is what we encounter every single day in our lives. It’s love, it’s regret, it’s hate and a lot of other emotions. And I feel it is a great way to express not only storytelling but all those big emotions that we experience in life that sometimes we cannot express with words.”

The second piece, “Sound and Fury,” composed by Clyne, was inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, and includes a delivery of Macbeth’s final soliloquy. Clyne writes that including the final soliloquy seemed perfect as both the subject matter and the intended delivery utilize elements of timing, much like music, to deliver its message. The next composition, “Hok-Lo Balladry” by composer Lee, was inspired by a Taiwanese nursery rhyme that Lee converted into a piece for string orchestra. Ting said that she chose this piece in part to celebrate diversity in the field of orchestral composition. Lee has earned several honors for her compositions and was the first Taiwanese and fourth Asian composer to be commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The fourth and final piece was a selection from the original score in the 1964 film version of Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy, “Hamlet,” by Dmitri Shostakovich. The selection covered the emotional highlights of the play and included music from Hamlet’s final duel and ultimate death.

Many audience members were there to support a family member or friend who was an orchestra member. After the performance, orchestra members poured from backstage and were met with bouquets of flowers and warm greetings from their loved ones.

The Technique also spoke to Ting about her ability to bring each ensemble member together while performing.

Ting compared conducting to the role of a film director, saying, “Think about the famous film directors; they work with the most fabulous film stars. They know how to act, but why do they need a director to tell them how to do it? That’s the same thing.”

Ting does not necessarily see her job as teaching students how to play their instrument but as guiding and leading students as a group.  

“These players learn their instruments growing up, but the conductor’s job is to bring everybody together and find a common goal,” Ting said. 

As part of her job as a conductor for the orchestra, Ting said she tells students that, “it doesn’t really matter whether the concert went well or not. It’s part of the process. It’s a way to present [it] kind of like a checkpoint.”

Ting said that regardless of how the concert went on a particular night, “after a concert I can’t sleep at night. The music will play back in my mind the entire night. That happens every single time.”

When asked about the orchestra’s contribution to students, Ting said, “many students appreciate a place where it’s not science-oriented or engineering-related. It’s a place where you can explore experience and express your ideas, your feelings,” defining their role as a  structured, creative outlet.The Georgia Tech School of Music will be hosting several more concerts this semester. A complete list of ensemble concerts and events can be found on the Georgia Tech School of Music website or at music.gatech.edu/2023-2024-ensemble-concerts.