Crash Course: Computer Science-The Future of Computing

Cybersecurity is a set of techniques to protect the secrecy, integrity, and availability of computer systems and data against threats. In today’s episode, we’re going to unpack these three goals and talk through some strategies we use like passwords, biometrics, and access privileges to keep our information as secure, but also as accessible as possible. From massive Denial of Service, or DDos attacks, to malware and brute force password cracking there are a lot of ways for hackers to gain access to your data, so we’ll also discuss some strategies like creating strong passwords, and using 2-factor authentication, to keep your information safe.

Today we\'re going to talk about hackers and their strategies for breaking into computer systems. Now, not all hackers are are malicious cybercriminals intent on stealing your data (these people are known as Black Hats). There are also White Hats who hunt for bugs, close security holes, and perform security evaluations for companies. And there are a lot of different motivations for hackers—sometimes just amusement or curiosity, sometimes for money, and sometimes to promote social or political goals. Regardless, we\'re not going to teach you how to become a hacker in this episode but we are going to walk you through some of the strategies hackers use to gain access to your devices, so you can be better prepared to keep your data safe.

Today we’re going to talk about how to keep information secret, and this isn’t a new goal. From as early as Julius Caesar’s Caesar cipher to Mary, Queen of Scots, encrypted messages to kill Queen Elizabeth in 1587, theres has long been a need to encrypt and decrypt private correspondence. This proved especially critical during World War II as Allan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park attempted to decrypt messages from Nazi Enigma machines, and this need has only grown as more and more information sensitive tasks are completed on our computers. So today, we’re going to walk you through some common encryption techniques such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange, and RSA which are employed to keep your information safe, private, and secure.

So we\'ve talked a lot in this series about how computers fetch and display data, but how do they make decisions on this data? From spam filters and self-driving cars, to cutting edge medical diagnosis and real-time language translation, there has been an increasing need for our computers to learn from data and apply that knowledge to make predictions and decisions. This is the heart of machine learning which sits inside the more ambitious goal of artificial intelligence. We may be a long way from self-aware computers that think just like us, but with advancements in deep learning and artificial neural networks our computers are becoming more powerful than ever.

Today we’re going to talk about how computers see. We’ve long known that our digital cameras and smartphones can take incredibly detailed images, but taking pictures is not quite the same thing. For the past half-century, computer scientists have been working to help our computing devices understand the imagery they capture, leading to advancements everywhere, from tracking hands and whole bodies, biometrics to unlock our phones, and eventually giving autonomous cars the ability to understand their surroundings.

Today we’re going to talk about how computers understand speech and speak themselves. As computers play an increasing role in our daily lives there has been an growing demand for voice user interfaces, but speech is also terribly complicated. Vocabularies are diverse, sentence structures can often dictate the meaning of certain words, and computers also have to deal with accents, mispronunciations, and many common linguistic faux pas. The field of Natural Language Processing, or NLP, attempts to solve these problems, with a number of techniques we’ll discuss today. And even though our virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, Bixby, and Cortana have come a long way from the first speech processing and synthesis models, there is still much room for improvement.

Today we\'re going to talk about robots! Robots are often thought as a technology of the future, but they\'re already here by the millions in the workplace, our homes, and pretty soon on the roads. We\'ll discuss the origins of robotics to its proliferation, and even look at some common control designs that were implemented to make them more useful in the workplace. Robots are often thought of as a menace or danger to society, and although there definitely is the propensity for malicious uses, robots also have the potential to drastically improve the world.

We’ve spent most of this series talking about computers. Which makes sense - this is Crash Course COMPUTER SCIENCE after all. But at their core computers are tools employed by humans and humans are pretty complicated. So today, we’re going to discuss some psychological considerations in building computers like how to make them easier for humans to use, the uncanny valley problem when humanoid robots gets more and more humanlike, and strategies to make our devices work better with us by incorporating our emotions and even altering our gaze. Oh, and we\'ll talk about Carrie Anne\'s all time favorite user interface design principle - knurling.

Today we’re going to go a little meta and talk about how computer science can support learning with educational technology. We here at Crash Course are big fans of interactive in-class learning and hands-on experiences, but we also believe in the additive power of educational technology inside and outside the classroom from the Internet itself and Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs to AI driven intelligent tutoring systems and virtual reality.

In our SERIES FINALE of Crash Course Computer Science we take a look towards the future! In the past 70 years electronic computing has fundamentally changed how we live our lives, and we believe it’s just getting started. From ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence, and self-driving cars to brain computer interfaces, wearable computers, and maybe even the singularity there is so much amazing potential on the horizon. Of course there is also room for peril with the rise of artificial intelligence and more immediate displacement of much of the workforce through automation. It’s tough to predict how it will all shake out, but it’s our hope that this series has inspired you to take part in shaping that future. Thank you so much for watching.