For this project I wanted to rather than directly answer either of the two questions assigned, engage with their themes more directly. The two questions that were offered included "Should a liberal arts student learn to code? If so, when, why, and in what circumstances; if not, why not." and "Do algorithms contribute to a more just world? If so, when, why, and in what circumstances; if not, why not."
In an effort to engage with these questions more directly I, myself a liberal arts student, decided to use a generative algorithm that is publically available to create all of the textual responses seen in this project while I handled the creation of the webpages. The algorithm that I used is known as text-davinci-002 and is part of the OpenAI Playground initiative.
import os
import openai
openai.api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
response = openai.Completion.create(
engine="text-davinci-002",
prompt="",
temperature=0.7,
max_tokens=256,
top_p=1,
frequency_penalty=0,
presence_penalty=0
)
I'm curious to see if any readers grew suspicious of the responses provided while engaging with them and if their own personal answers to the prompts posed changed at any point. Did they change upon reading the auto-generated responses? Did they change upon finding out that they were automatically generated in the first place? I also think there is some fun irony created in this project. What does it mean to have an algorithm generate a response to a question about the ethics of algorithms? I will further discuss the implications of this project and these questions in my formal linear paper to be uploaded here on Wednesday.
With all this in mind I think it is only fair that I give you my real answers to these questions as well.
I personally believe that coding is a worth while skill that everyone should at least consider learning, however not everyone needs to learn to code. If anything I believe that not everyone should learn to code so that our ways of thinking do not become homogenous. Instead I would hope people follow their own diverse callings and interests to help contribute to a greater more diverse pool of human knowledge which I hope is at least partially consistant of Code as a Liberal Art students.
I personally believe that algorithms, just like the people who create those algorithms, can not be lopped into either contributing to or detracting from a more just world. I also believe that this is not a helpful question to ask as it effectively has no provable answer. (Newton's Giant Flaming Laser Sword Moment) Instead I think we should be focusing on discussing how we might develop algortihms that do contribute to a more just world and encouraging all programmers to do so. One way I think this could be effectively tackled is by making sure programming students are exposed to other disciplines such as liberal arts and ethics. In a round about way this coems back to the first question. I do not think all liberal art students should learn how to code but I do believe all coding students should study some liberal arts.