Developing a Research Question

In this blog post I will list several potential research questions that pique my interest. I'll also explain further why I might want to pursue answering these research questions.

Screenshot from my computer, 9/26/2015

One interesting subsection of artificial intelligence I encountered was the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). There is great debate over these weapons systems that may have the potential to independently target and fire upon enemies on the ground. One of the biggest points of contention is whether or not LAWS should be able to make the decision to potentially end human lives. The disconnect between man and machine here is of great debate.

From this controversy, I've come up with two research questions:

"What role does and should ethics play in the implication of LAWS? Are we crossing a moral boundary when we allow machines to make the decision to potentially kill a human being?"

"How should LAWS be handled by the United Nations and other international regulation groups? Should the development of LAWS be banned all together?"

I feel like this topic is extremely interesting and will likely base my second project on one, or both of these research questions.


However, if I don't choose to pursue LAWS as a topic, I will likely fall back to the subject of internet privacy as it pertains to computer science. Many people are concerned with their privacy online, as a result of scandals related to the NSA and cloud storage invasions. It would be interesting to further explore this topic and understand more of how these scandals took place.

A research question for this topic is:

"Are agencies such as the NSA justified in their actions or have our rights been infringed upon? What actions, if any, should be taken to prevent more privacy infringements?"