For years, computer science was the hottest college major, outpacing all others and was considered the golden ticket to a lucrative job.
Then why has enrollment dropped significantly? Because computers aren’t going away.
Dublin, Marysville and Union County have teamed up to create an innovation hub known as The Beta District.
As the name suggests, it’s a place where new tech ideas get tested, tweaked and launched involving smarter and safer mobility.
We’ll learn more about this initiative.
Parents can now see what topics teens are exploring with AI.
Guests:
- Shira Ovide, technology reporter, The Washington Post
- Doug McCollough, executive director, The Beta District
- Russell Holly, director of commerce content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Once the degree of the future, computer science enrollment is on the decline. For many years, a computer science degree was thought of as a safe bet to secure success in a technology-centered world. Now, computer science graduates are struggling to find work and many see AI and increased competition as the cause.
Shira Ovide is a columnist at the "Washington Post" with a focus on AI and technology. And today Shira joins us to discuss the decline of computer science majors. Welcome to All Sides.
Shira Ovide: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So you wrote in your piece that computer science as a major had a 15 year boom that started back in 2008. Everyone was telling high school students that computer was the way of the future, the golden ticket. So let's start with that computer science degree that everyone was getting. What was it? Was it all coding? What were they learning?
Ovide: Yeah, it depended on the school and it depened on the student, but a lot of it was, yes, learning kind of the nuts and bolts of how to write software code and tell computers what to do.
Juravich: So you say that you've seen universities see a drop in enrollment recently in computer science. You write that in the past couple of years, picking that as a major is dropping. What did you find out about why fewer people are choosing the computer science major?
Ovide: Yeah, I think that decline, which really started in earnest just this past fall across universities in the United States, it caught, I think, a lot of folks in computer related academia off guard. And they're still debating what exactly is going on, right? For every student, there may be a different reason for why they may have not opted for computer science and picked a different major instead.
So I'll mention a few of the leading contenders. One is that because computer science has become so popular in the last fifteen years, there may have just been this kind of fatigue, or a split into specializations. So, a lot of universities in the United States have created these sort of specialized majors that may or may not count as computer science, including cybersecurity, and AI, and data science, right? So instead of majoring in computer science... You major in AI, is that really you shifting away from computer science?
The other culprit I'll mention is jobs, that computer science is particularly prone to swings in the technology-related job market. And if you read anything technology- related in the news, you know that people are worried that AI is going to put people out of work, particularly people who work on software coding.
The reality is, the job market is awful for recent college graduates, almost no matter what you major in, but it can feel particularly brutal if you went to a computer science school and the implicit message was, sort of, learn to code and you're set for life, and now you can't find a job. So, that may be discouraging some people from majoring in computer science now.
Juravich: Tell me more about this idea of majoring in AI rather than majoring in computer science because as you said I would think that maybe like AI is kind of a division of computer science or sort of just maybe different words are used to explain it. It's like are colleges picking up and creating like can you major in AI development I guess?
Ovide: You can. I mean, again, it depends on the school, but MIT, which is a very prominent school for computer science, they started an AI major. So did Carnegie Mellon University. It's another kind of elite level university. The University of Michigan, which has a highly regarded school of computer science and engineering, they start a robotics major a few years ago.
So I think the reality is when you have this 15-year boom in one particular academic discipline like computer science. It does create this sort of demand for people to say, okay, but what I really want to do is learn more about robots, or electric vehicles, or cyber security. And so, there's been demand and reaction by universities to let people do those more specialized majors.
Juravich: Well, and then your article says that the first place people jump to when they hear about a declining major is to blame AI for everything. So, but I guess there are people who have to like run the AI, so there's still some people out there learning about it. Is AI to blame for the decrease in computer science graduates? Is it something that kids interested in STEM fields need to worry about?
Ovide: It's a great question. And I really, I would not want to be a teenager in 2026. It doesn't seem very fun. Because the reality is, nobody can really say with any kind of certainty what AI is going to do to your career prospects, no matter what kind of job you're kind of thinking about as a teenager or a 20-something.
And yeah, it is definitely true. It's hard to quantify this, but I have spoken to people, or I've seen people online. Saying they're worried about A.I. Particularly automating sort of the entry-level jobs that lots of kind of computer science graduates used to do, right? Which is sort of very mechanical writing software code, monkeying with code, I think, as one college student put it to me.
And I think there is a genuine fear, and that fear may be correct. It may not be correct, but there's a genuine fear that those jobs are going to be automated away soon, and so let's stay away from anything that looks like kind of software development or early career software development jobs. Again, I don't know whether that's a good bet or not, but I understand the fear that you may be experiencing if you're a teenager or a student, I'm sorry, a parent of a school or college-age student.
Juravich: What about the idea you mentioned that, you know, AI could be one reason for the decline in computer science majors, but then you said another reason is competition. There's just too many people out there with these degrees, not enough jobs. Computers are the future, computers are everything. So I would think that there are plenty of jobs, but is AI currently right now taking some of those jobs not just five years from now?
Ovide: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a very vigorous debate right now about to what extent AI is already having an impact on the job market. And I think almost universally, economists will say there probably, by and large, is not an AI effect in the labor market right now. But it is true, which is probably mostly not about AI, that the job market is not good currently.
And it's particularly not good for entry-level workers, for people who have fresh college degrees and want to enter kind of white-collar professional fields. And again, it's probably not about AI. There's all kinds of changes, both in the economy and the workforce and employers' preferences for workers in the last five or six years.
And again, it's probably mostly not about AI, but the reality that has created is that if you are a recent or new college graduate in computer science and in lots of other fields, you're having a tough time finding a job. And it almost feels like there's no place to escape those kinds of difficulties landing a first job.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we are talking about STEM degrees with Shira Ovide, columnist for the "Washington Post" with a focus on AI and technology. Many universities, including Ohio State University here, have invested huge sums of money into computer science programs, STEM programs, building up programs. They're investing a lot of money in building AI right now. Do you think that there are gonna be some universities out there that regret some of these investments? They have too much they went too far
Ovide: Great question! I think it's hard to say. I think most universities are taking it very seriously, that they know their computer science or kind of mechanical engineering or other kind of computer-related specialties. They know that they need to adjust the curriculum for an AI age.
And again, I'm not a... I'm not an academic specialist, but I've heard criticism that some of them have not been moving quickly enough to really change the curriculum to reflect the new reality of an AI age. But whether they're going to regret it, I mean, again, it's hard to say. I think part of it depends on what AI actually does to computer-related fields, and I just feel like nobody really knows. You know, there's so many predictions, and there's so many productions that are. Probably not based on anything other than vibes.
Juravich: Yeah, vibes, yeah. I mean, because I'm constantly being told that AI is not gonna take all your jobs. They're gonna take away, AI is gonna take the menial tasks so that you have more brain space to be able to do the critical thinking and the creative thinking that humans were meant to do. Like, so if that's the case, then we need more liberal arts majors rather than all of these computer science majors, right?
Ovide: Yeah, I mean, again, I don't if I were advising an 18 year old, I don't know what I would tell them to do. You know, what to study to kind of prepare yourself for an AI future. But yeah, I think that's right, that there are plenty of people who are saying, look, AI may help you or help many workers more than they kind of automate away whole swaths of jobs. I just don't think we really know the answer to that question right now.
Juravich: Yeah. So students, instead of picking a computer science major over the next couple of years, you mentioned that they'll be picking things like an AI major, if that exists. But then also there's like data science, data analytics, robotics, cybersecurity, you mentioned mechanical engineering. All of these are kind of computer science adjacent, right? But maybe they have more sustainability.
Ovide: Yeah, again, I think there's probably complicated reasons for all of this. But yes, it does feel like one of the beneficiaries of this, again pretty sudden and potentially temporary decline in people choosing to major in computer science, one of beneficiaries has been engineering-related specialties, including mechanical engineering, which, again debatable, but some people think that's maybe more resilient to a kind of... AI-related changes in computing.
One of the differences between mechanical engineering and computer science is that mechanical engineering typically is thinking about the intersection of machines and software, hardware and software. Thinking about rockets or drones or electric Vehicles or you know factory robots that kind of thing that may be more It could be, again, we'll see, less prone to kind of AI disruption than something like the pure mechanics of writing software code as a computer science graduate.
Juravich: Did you investigate at all? Are you seeing similar declines in enrollment in computer science in other countries?
Ovide: That's interesting. I actually didn't look at other countries. I think that would be interesting to look at. One thing that I didn't mention in my article, but that is true, is that the enrollment declines in computer science are much worse for masters and PhD programs. And the probability there is that that's a lot about restrictions on international students that for graduate level work in computer science, international students are, depending on the numbers.
Two-thirds of all kind of graduate-level students in computer science at U.S. Universities. And we know in the last year that it's become a lot harder for international students to study, harder or less appealing, for international to study in the United States. So that seems to be a factor in what's driving the significant declines in masters and PhD students in Computer Science. And it could be, although it was hard to prove this, the difficulties international s- with international students could be part of the explanation for the decline in computer science enrollment at the undergraduate level as well.
Juravich: Well, just to end on, you mentioned this a couple of times that you don't want to give advice to an 18-year-old. But if you had to, if you were to give advice to a prospective college student with a passion for coding, a STEM kid who just loves all the science, technology, engineering, and math stuff, after writing this article, what would you tell them? I mean, is there a cause for some optimism?
Ovide: Yeah, look, I think if you're super interested in this field, if, you know, you love computers, if you love coding, if you are excited about robotics, do it! Right? I don't want to, again... I may be bad at giving advice, but it feels like if that's your passion, do it and just, you know, be mindful that you may need to have more than one career in your lifetime, which I think is something that we've been told for a long time, right, that you need to kind of constantly re-educate yourself for the changing demands of a workforce. And that seems like it's going to be more true in the future than it has been in the recent past.
Juravich: I want to thank you so much for your time. We've been talking with Shira Ovide, columnist at the "Washington Post", with a focus on AI and technology. Thanks for joining us, Shira. Thank you so. And coming up, we're going to talk about an innovation hub in central Ohio. That's when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday on All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Dublin, Marysville, and Union County have teamed up to create an innovation hub known as the Beta District. As the name suggests, it's a place where new tech ideas get tested, tweaked, and launched, involving smarter and safer mobility. Doug McCollough is executive director of the Beta district, and he's here today to tell us more about it. Welcome to All Sides, Doug.
Doug McCollough: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Juravich: So this isn't exactly a new venture. I mean, it started out as being called the 33 Smart Corridor. Do I have that name right? So, and it's since expanded and rebranded to be called the Beta District. But tell me about the origin. Like what was the 33 smart corridor?
McCollough: So the city of Dublin and the city of Marysville and Union County share this geographical area and really needed to coordinate their economic development. Growth is going up the 33 corridor, and it was important for them to be speaking to each other and to coordinate what's kind of happening there. They made a decision to form a council of governments, and the opportunity to focus it on smart mobility came along.
They want to leverage their heritage and the amount of automotive manufacturers and companies that are focused on mobility. And around that time, a grant opportunity came around, federal grant, close to the time when the Smart Columbus grant was awarded from the U.S. Department of Transportation. It gave them an opportunity to focus that Council of Governments on the smart mobility corridor. So it's really the 33 innovation corridor. And it has been called the 33 Smart Mobility Corridor. But it is centrally focused on automotive, smart mobility, and the movement of things in people.
Juravich: Okay, what made you change it to the beta district?
McCollough: So the 33 innovation corridor or the 33 smart mobility corridor doesn't roll off the tongue. You can't walk it around the rest of the United States or around the world and attract companies to, what is it? Where is it, what does it even mean? It needed a brand. And so the beta district focuses on, well, I'm an old technologist. I'll say that first.
So when you invent a technology or innovate a new technology, you test it. They call that alpha testing at your desk, at the bench. That's alpha testing. When you take it to the real world out with customers, they call that beta testing. And so having a district where beta testing can happen is where the name and the branding came from.
Juravich: Okay and you've used a geometric concept known as the triple helix to explain government, industry, and universities all coming together to partner. You've you called it a new local government unit so describe that in reality like day to day this triple helix.
McCollough: So being a new government is really the combination of three local governments. Union County, city of Marysville, city of Dublin are three local government. But a council of governments actually forms another government. It's the public sector entity that acts as a government. But in order to enhance innovation and bring innovation to a geographic area, you need a university.
You need a research university or a bunch of universities. And then you also need the private sector. When those three things act together in close coordination and good communication, they facilitate an enhancement, sort of an acceleration of innovation. And so I am a big believer in triple helix thinking, and so having close relationships with the Ohio State University, Ohio University, Columbus State Community College, but also institutes like Battelle. These are all research institutes. Having that relationship and then private sector companies like Honda. The Honda supply chain, all of the logistics companies and innovators and software companies are how you facilitate innovation.
Juravich: So one of the featured labs of the 33 Smart Mobility Corridor began back in 2017. The goal was to connect vehicles and smart transportation. So how do you define smart mobility? I mean, talk to me about how you're making 33 smarter.
McCollough: That's a good question. So mobility, I define it as the movement of things or people. Packages, so in logistics and delivery and those things, that's the movement things. And people in their cars or busses or trains, that's mobility. Smart mobility adds a layer of technology. Sensors, data, security, network, communications, compute in order to automate essentially the data that's necessary for vehicles that eventually will self-driving cars.
Air taxis, drone delivery systems, all of those vehicles are going to have to interact with each other, and along with pedestrians and road workers and vulnerable road users. All of that needs to operate in a new world that's coming fast, and so we have to use what we know about technology and artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to create a safer, more productive environment where passenger vehicles Rapid transit, trucks and air taxis and drone delivery systems can all work together without crashing into each other and everybody's data remaining safe. So that's smart mobility as we envision it and a lot of people around the world envision it in the same way.
Juravich: So I've driven on 33, right? You know, I'm sure many of our listeners have at least at one point or another. What would I have noticed in the past, you know, five to 10 years has gotten smarter.
McCollough: Well, if you recognize a different kind of poll, you would have noticed the poll. But, you know, mobility systems and a lot of technical systems, especially for public sector, shouldn't be.
Juravich: I would have noticed a different poll. What do you mean?
McCollough: So there are poles that are along the roadside.
Juravich: I'm not an observant driver. Tell me more.
McCollough: Well, so there's a 35-mile stretch of fiber optic cable that goes from the Dublink fiber system in Dublin and its two data centers all the way up to Transportation Research Center in East Liberty. You won't see that. So it's invisible, and a lot of infrastructure should be invisible, so you wouldn't have noticed that. But there are poles that connect to the fiber all the up and back down that 35-miles stretch of highway, and those poles have on top of them a wireless device that emits the signal.
And in some of the vehicles that are being tested, there's what they call an onboard unit that receives that signal and broadcasts information about the driver, the road, different observations or things that that sensor can see. And the road is becoming intelligent. One day you will drive a vehicle that will receive information that maybe came from a different vehicle or came from drone or came a police car that will inform you and your vehicle of information that make your drive safer.
And easier, faster, with less congestion. But you won't see it. These are wireless signals that are happening in the air, and you shouldn't see it. I mean, I'm a big believer that our technology should emerge and should evolve, and we don't really notice it. I don't think we notice Uber and DoorDash as much. It's just a part of our lives.
Juravich: So you're working ahead of all of these driverless cars that are coming or the more connected cars that everyone's getting now. You're kind of like one step ahead of it so that the infrastructure is there for whenever more of these cars are smarter.
McCollough: We are hoping to be two steps ahead. We want to be the environment where the self-driving cars and the drones and the different moving things come to test and see, how do I interact with traffic? People ask me all the time, am I going to have to drive next to a car with no driver in it? And we're trying to figure that out. And if it's going to work and be safe, we want it to be tested in the beta district. We want it in Ohio. We want the companies who are inventing that technology and the policies and the practices. To come to the beta district to prove that it can be done safely.
Juravich: Okay, so you want these companies to come and test out their cars on 33.
McCollough: Exactly right.
Juravich: They want you want them to go from Dublin to Marysville and safely and figure it out. Yeah
McCollough: And move around, and we are one corridor among a network of different corridors, 70. Route 70 is a corridor now, and if you look at Drive Ohio and the Ohio Department of Transportation and around the state, there are other places where this testing is happening. We want to be a coordinating force, a thought leader, and we certainly want it to happen physically in the Beta District, but we also want to part of a larger community that are answering these questions.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday on All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about an innovative technology hub here in central Ohio with Doug McCullough, executive director of the Beta District. So Marysville offers the opportunity to test things out in a smaller city. I mean, explain why we're picking Marysvile as opposed to doing this in Columbus.
McCollough: So one of the advantages of the Beta District is that we cover a lot of different environments. And it's important for us. First of all, we have four seasons of weather. In Ohio, we snow, we rain, we hot weather. But also we have an urban environment and a suburban environment and a more rural environment. So we have a small town field and we have a larger exurb, and all of that is within the Beta district.
You can throw Columbus in there as well. A visitor or a new company to the Columbus region should be able to go to quite an urban dense area all the way to a more rural area with more agriculture and manufacturing types of places as well. And that is a kind of environmental diversity that makes it more attractive. So if you've ever traveled around one of Ohio's amazing small towns, you know, they're just different. They're set up different. There. Constructed different, they have lower density, they have different kinds of traffic interests and problems and challenges than a downtown Columbus or a neighborhood in a dense city. And we wanna present that to the world as you can come to one place and you can get a closed system or you can an urban system or you get an agricultural environment or you an industrial environment all in one really small area when you think of it that way.
Juravich: Hmm. Does Columbus have a role though? I mean, is the city contributing money or helping attract companies to know about you?
McCollough: So we certainly partner with Columbus and we share and coordinate, particularly from an economic development standpoint. If someone comes to our region and they want a manufacturing area or they want to build a new building or they class A office space, we coordinate together. The city of Columbus, but also One Columbus, Jobs, Ohio, we form really an economic development ecosystem that sometimes the beta district wins that question. Because it's an automotive kind of company and we have that expertise there. But sometimes the City of Columbus wins that because they're the more appropriate place to house or form the new home of some company that's never been in Ohio before.
Juravich: Where's the beta district getting its money? Is it federal money, state money, local money, or companies investing in you?
McCollough: So we certainly are applying for grants, and we've gotten federal grant that got us started. But the City of Dublin, City of Marysville, and Union County contribute from their general funds into the Council of Governments. And so we have a small, tight budget, but the majority of those funds come from there. We are on a money hunt, just like any other innovation district or institution of our Bye. Certainly with grants, state capital budget, we compete and go after those funds just like a number of other institutions in our region.
Juravich: You have an event coming up in the summer. It's in August. It's called the Ohio Future Mobility Conference. Tell me about who it's directed to, who's coming to it, what it is.
McCollough: Yeah, it's Ohio's Future of Mobility Conference, and it is intended to attract and put on display for us people who have those innovations right now or are interested in them. We have panel discussions. Last year we had a demonstration of the truck platooning technology that Ease Logistics did out on I-70. We had someone from Beta Technologies, which is an electric plane, to come.
We had... Dr. John Horak, who is part of the VISTA program here at the Ohio State University and is dealing with space technology, space station technology, and he drew a distinction of how mobility systems went from horse-drawn carriages to now going to the building of the next international space station. It was a fascinating address, and it's those types of things that we're talking about. Also, vulnerable road users. How people in wheelchairs or strollers can use the road system and talking about some of the work that Kodo is doing. So anything having to do with smart mobility, we have an event that allows people to come in and engage with us, form new relationships with each other, and learn.
Juravich: So, you also wear the title of technologist as a part of all of this. You're quite busy in the tech universe. You worked as Dublin's chief information officer for a number of years. And then Dublin tapped you in 2024 to be the first executive director of the Dublin Global Institute for the study of intelligence, for the Study of the Intelligent Community. So I'm tripping over your title, but that's okay. What does that role entail? What are you doing for Dublin? What does it mean to be studying an intelligent community?
McCollough: Yeah, it's another mouthful. I would say that the Intelligent Community Forum is a global system of granting awards to different communities that have demonstrated factors that indicate their intelligence. It's a step above a regular smart city. And it's complex. It's difficult, requiring a lot of coordination and planning. And the city of Dublin has always been really, really good at it.
A number of years ago, they formed an institute to share the lessons of the Intelligent Community Movement with other communities here in central Ohio. The city of Westerville, the city of Hilliard, Defiance Ohio, all of them have competed in the Intellgent Community Movement. And so as the executive director, the first named one of that institute, I am assisting other communities. Learn the lessons that Dublin has learned over many years with its fiber program, its workforce development, all of its economic development, just sharing that information with other communities and learning along the way as well.
Juravich: You also, as if you need more to do, you're the co-founder and CEO of Color-Coded Labs and that trains and empowers people who are underrepresented in communities with tech skills. Can you update me on that work? What do you do with that?
McCollough: Sure, well, we have an active cohort right now. Cohort number nine, and we're filling up cohort number 10. We teach AI-enabled business analysis skills so that people who are not in the tech industry can find a way in. And I listened to your interview with the previous guest, and there's such a diversity of different kinds of roles and value that people can add.
But I think that the industry is looking for resilience and experience, and you know, we train adults who. Have an opportunity to gain some of these jobs and certainly looking at the underrepresented community and I think that our industry and by our industry I mean the technology industry here has room for adults to enter into this field and add value, certainly in central Ohio. This is a big tech town now. And it needs people, and sometimes it trips over itself in figuring out how to match its needs with its supply, but we're gonna get better at that.
Juravich: Well, yeah, you just mentioned I was just interviewing a "Washington Post" columnist who wrote about how there are fewer students majoring in computer science in the past couple of years. What would you advise young people to do if they're getting ready to graduate high school? Like, what in your mind, what's the job of the future if you were giving them advice?
McCollough: I think that the question is hard to address because we used to have jobs. We used to a job of the future and you would predict that this is the kind of role that you could skill up for and apply for and gain. I don't think we're going to have job like that. I think we are going opportunities to provide value and that's going to come from creativity and a whole lot of skills. It's going to come from teamwork. The ability to problem solve, and you're not gonna have a job.
And that scares a lot of people. But I think that we have to be comfortable. If you look at what you've just said, Doug, you're doing a lot of different things. I don't really have a job I
Juravich: You have three jobs. Yeah.
McCollough: Yeah, but any one of them could evolve or change on any given day and I have to be comfortable with that. So my advice to younger people is prepare to change every day or every week, but have a core set of skills that you can offer to an entire economy, which may be focused on technology or it may be focus on medicine or health or social services or law enforcement. Um, but. You're going to do some technology at some point. So I wouldn't say I'm not going to be a technologist, so I'm going to study along this. It doesn't matter what you're going be working on. You're gonna be using or building technology. So I would advise people to continue learning it.
Juravich: Hmm. Well, what would you advise when it comes to the tech roles that you're looking at and that you deal with day in and day out? I mean, is a four-year degree needed? A two-year certificate and associate's degree? How do we learn for our non-job?
McCollough: I'm observing a general shift to less of a four-year degree, but I'm a big booster of a college degree. So I think if you can get it, you should try to get it. But if you were to work in a manufacturing environment, you may not need a four year degree to start. But if had a two year degree, for example, after your first five years, you're going to continue learning and you're gonna get the equivalent of it. So I think we're, instead of moving away from a college degree, we are changing how we get at one. And it may stretch out over six or seven years, which used to be a really bad thing. But I think people need to go to work more quickly. And I think our companies need to provide the kind of training that allows someone to evolve and grow into the kind management roles and those things that are gonna be out there for them.
Juravich: We've been talking about an innovative technology hub here in central Ohio called the Beta District with Doug McCollough, Executive Director of the Beta district. Thank you for your time today. And coming up, we're gonna talk about some legislation to monitor what is being made with 3D printers. That is when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. 3D printing at home has become more and more common in recent years. But legislators in Washington, New York, California, and Colorado are raising concerns about these devices being used to potentially print gun parts. Legislation regarding the monitoring of 3D-printing is becoming more and popular for better or for worse. Joining us now to talk about regulating 3D printers is Russell Holly, the director of commerce content for CNET. Welcome back, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: So is there a particular incident that prompted this type of legislation where we want to regulate 3D printers?
Holly: I don't know that there was one specific incident so much as there is, you know, kind of an ongoing effort in what is essentially the 3D printed version of building a better mousetrap in that the idea behind a ghost gun, something that you can either machine out of metal or 3D print using some of the more durable materials that are available now in order to print these things that can then be modified to be firearms.
Is something that, you know, given an absence of control and other aspects of, you know, firearm regulation, there are groups like Washington, Colorado, New York, and California that are all working on bills trying to stop, you know, the creation of those parts on like a hardware level. So it makes it so that the printer itself is just physically incapable of making something that could later be used or become a ghost gun.
Juravich: Okay, so they want like a law basically to regulate the 3D printer so that it can't possibly print a gun part. Is that right?
Holly: That's exactly right. This is kind of a continuing story, you know, there have been efforts to make it so that it was very, very difficult for the files that can make these ghost guns to be, you know, published publicly. That has been going on for almost a decade at this point. And in many of those cases, it is certainly quite a bit more difficult to get a hold of those things, but it is not impossible. And so that, you being that they cannot completely solve this problem by making it very difficult to access. The files they're trying to make it so that the printers themselves analyze those files and then almost like a governor built into the software chooses not to make them.
Juravich: Is there anything else that the laws want to prohibit 3D printers from doing, or is it mainly just this weaponry thing?
Holly: It's all done under the kind of the auspice of ghost guns and the issues that are found around some of the untraceable firearms. But the mechanisms that are being deployed, the language being used in order to kind of crack down on some of this stuff makes it very, very broad. You know, there are quite a few, you know, kind of fantasy... Tools and weapons and knives and things like that that get made for things like cosplay or for wall decorations or You know any number of other things like, that are in no way you know conceived as ghost guns and there are quite a few proponents of That are against these bills that view these kind of things as being in kind of the crossfire for Uh the kind of collateral damage that may be associated with banning some of these things on a hardware level
Juravich: I have to think that, you know, preventing the building of weapons is a good cause for you know legislation, but there's privacy concerns. I mean, as someone who owns a 3D printer doesn't really want the government pay like, I don't know, paying attention to what they're printing.
Holly: That's exactly right. Yeah, and outside of government overreach, there's really quite a bit in the 3D printer community about how much the manufacturers themselves can see what it is that you're doing in some of these printers. Some of the more popular versions of these machines are always online. They don't function correctly if they're not always online, there are AI tools that are built into a lot of the software that are available now that take a look at the thing that you are printing in order to either... Make recommendations so that the print goes better or to adjust settings in order to make it so that print kind of has the desired visual effect, all of that is sending information back to the manufacturer. And it is that kind of connection that the government wants to be involved in in way or another.
Juravich: All right, pivoting to another topic, new technology keeps rolling out and most Americans want the newest cutting edge device, but this leaves many people with a lot of outdated technology that they don't know what to do with. So many Americans are throwing away their old technology or just letting it sit in the back of a desk drawer. What people don't is that throwing away their old tech could be throwing away some spare cash. So why is it a bad idea? Like, what do we do with all this old tech besides throw it in the garbage.
Holly: There are so many different things that you can do with old tech, even beyond trying to sell it or donating it. There are ways that it can be repurposed within your home. I have an old phone that I have never used as, I haven't used as a phone in over a decade, but it is currently plugged into a system in my house that tells me what the ambient temperature is outside. It's a small thing, it doesn't use a lot of power and it's something that I can rely on because it's a thing that I built and have some small control over.
These things can be repurposed, phones in particular can be re-purposed as internal security cameras inside of your home, they can be used as quick communicators throughout a house without needing to have anything other than a Wi-Fi connection. Laptops can be repurposed for a lot of different tasks around the house. There are a lot of different ways that you can go and reuse these things, but if reusing them isn't what you're really into, or if it's kind of damaged in a way that you're concerned someone wouldn't be able to buy, there are tons of donation groups across the country that will take hardware and remove the parts that are dangerous. Batteries that get old over time become less stable and more prone to harm. Especially batteries that when punctured can cause damage. I think most people have seen photos and videos of batteries that expand over time inside of a laptop or a phone or something like that. It looks really scary because it is. Keeping those kinds of things in your home, maybe in rooms that are not temperature regulated or like in an attic or something like that can cause real harm.
Juravich: Hmm. What about recycling though? Less than half adults in the US know that they can recycle old tech, which can take a toll on the environment if you just throw it away, right? So how do we recycle it?
Holly: There are a bunch of different recycling options that are available to folks. If you have a phone and you want to send it to a group that will do something with it, my first recommendation to most folks is cell phones for soldiers, which will take phones and refurbish them and give them to veterans that may not have access to that kind of technology. If you've a Best Buy near you, most Best Buys have a local trade-in program where they will recycle laptops and televisions and tablets and all kinds of things like that.
If you're looking to sell it, there are tools that are available on a ton of different platforms that allow you to take a look and see what is... Available and what the kind of going rate for those things. My personal favorite is a service called Swappa, S-W-A-P-P that allows you to take a look and see what other folks are currently selling those things for so that you have an idea of what you can actually get from it. And all of that is you know kind of person to person you know you're not going through a large company in most cases. Even Best Buy works with you know third parties for a lot of the recycling services so there are many options for getting that stuff out of your house.
Juravich: How do you make sure that your personal information isn't still on the device? I mean, what if it's so old that you don't even have the charger for it to turn it back on?
Holly: Oh, such a good question. If you don't have the ability to turn the thing on and it's something like an iPad or a phone that hasn't been opened or doesn't have access to the data controls, there are Fairly limited options, the best case in that place would be to take it to some place like Best Buy where they can provide a universal charger and walk you through the process of erasing your data, or finding someone in your area who may be able to help you locate a universal charter for that sort of thing. Um, you know, the if it's old enough where you do have access to things like removable storage and things like that, a lot of that stuff can just be removed from the system before you trade it into something. So it does get a little, there's a little more work in that space, but it is certainly possible to get your data off of those things before you actually make the trade in.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, I had an old iPad that I just took to Apple and gave it to them and they said that they would take care of erasing it and I now I'm like, did they? I hope so.
Holly: It's a pretty standard practice for Apple in particular. They have like a 10-step process that they go through for recycling any hardware like that.
Juravich: Yeah, okay. This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about some recent tech news with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content at CNET. New technology can make parents feel out of the loop with what their children have access to on the internet. Meta has added features to allow parents to see what their kids are asking AI. It's called Insights. And this feature comes in the wake of backlash for social media companies being alleged to make their platforms addictive to their users. Including children who use their platforms. So tell me about Insights, how can parents access it and what will Insights do?
Holly: Yeah, so Insights only works if you have established a meta account for your kid that is a child account. If they have, you know, kind of the same account that you have, then those tools aren't available. So to be super clear, this is something that... If you have created a specific like Instagram for kids or Facebook for kids account for your child and they are using some of the AI features the insights function will send you either an email or allow you to access a specific page within your account. That'll allow you to take a look at what, you know, the Instagram kids and the Instagram teen services, it doesn't show you, you know, like exact pages that they've been to or anything like that, but it'll show you you know what AI searches they're looking for and the ways in which they're interacting with like how much time they've spent, you know, looking at one topic or another.
Juravich: Can you read back the AI conversation, like what it's asking AI and how AI is responding?
Holly: It does not give you the full conversation, but it will highlight general topics. If a teen is asking AI about a couple of different trigger categories, like fashion, food, holidays, or more serious things like self-harm, those kind of things will pop up as the list of things that are available on a topic level.
Juravich: So does this new feature shift the responsibility for content moderation from the company to the parent?
Holly: Absolutely. This has been Meta's argument from the beginning, is that it makes a platform that people can interact with, and despite having recently lost several lawsuits that demonstrate that they know that they are releasing products that are addictive, on a legal level Meta maintains that responsibility for how you use a platform, regardless of where you are in your development cycle as a human being, is your responsibility alone. And this is a continuation of that by being able to say here as parents, you have the ability to parent in this aspect, you know, it still requires the person, you know, as the adult in that situation to be aware of what potential dangers even exist, which can be tough if you're not, you know, an active AI user in particular.
Juravich: Hmm. What about children who live in maybe an abusive family environment? I mean, if their parents are looking at what they're doing through these insights, it could be harmful for a kid who's trying to like, maybe get some help.
Holly: That is certainly an aspect. That's why Meta is very clear about saying that this is very different from explicit content moderation and why it only provides things like topic level searches instead of very specific search terms.
Juravich: Hmm. Is this insight thing new? Because I hadn't heard about it until you told us about it for the segment.
Holly: Yes, this is something that Meta has rolled out within the last two weeks. It's been slowly rolling out to folks who have these things. So if you have someone in your life who has either an Instagram teen account or a Facebook teen account and they are attached to your account as a teen, then that new insight function should be available to you by now.
Juravich: So was it something that was in the works or is this in response to those lawsuits that you mentioned where Metta has lost lawsuits because it's saying that they are harmful to kids, their platform's addictive. Were they working on it before?
Holly: That is a very good question that I suspect you would get a very different answer from if you ask someone at Meta.
Juravich: Okay, got it. Well, we have been talking with Russell Holley, Director of Commerce Content at CNET. Thanks so much for your time today, Russell.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And I wanted to say thank you to the All Sides staff. Producers Marcus Charleston and Erin Esmont-Rabinovitz. Student producers Iza Huck, Colin Simpson and Brianna Fortunate. And our student producer at Denison University is Kiara Berson. Our high school student producer is Henry Allen. And video production is by the Ohio Channel.
Board operation is by Chris Johnston and Cameron Howard. And I want to say, thank you today to Cameron Howard, he has been our board operator for quite some time. And today is his last day with us here at WOSU. Cam, I want to thank you for all of your hard work on the show, your dedication to the show. Cam even walked in a level three snow emergency when his bus didn't show up. He walked here because he cares enough to be here. So Cam, thank you all for your hard on All Sides and we will miss you. Good luck in your next adventure.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. Thanks for joining us. I'm Amy Juravich.