IB DP Computer Science Option C: Web science -: C.6 – The intelligent web HL Paper 2

Questionhl

The World Wide Web can be represented as a web graph.
The World Wide Web has expanded significantly over the last 10 years. In June 2018 , there were an estimated 1600 million websites and 4100 million users. This is approximately twice the figures of January 2014.
The World Wide Web can be divided into the text web and the semantic web.
The development of technologies that underpin the World Wide Web has led to the growth of ambient intelligence and collective intelligence.
a. Describe how a web graph can be used to represent the connectivity of the World Wide Web.$[4]$
b. Explain why a user can still navigate from one web page to another web page in the same amount of time as previously, even though the number [4] of web pages is significantly larger.
c. Outline two reasons why there needs to be a balance between expressivity and usability on the semantic web.$[4]$
d. Identify two features of ambient intelligence.[2]
e. Evaluate the role of collective intelligence in the advancement of human knowledge.[6]

▶️Answer/Explanation

Ans:

a. )
In graph theory, a graph is a set of nodes (also called vertices) that can be connected through edges;
In a web graph each web page is represented by a vertex;
In a web graph each hyperlink is represented by a directed edge;
Therefore, the web graph provides a representation / model of the connectivity of the World Wide Web;
The direction of the edge is from the page with the hyperlink to the page that is the target of the hyperlink;
b. )
Although the growth in the number of web-pages on the World Wide Web has increased exponentially, the diameter of the World Wide Web increases linearly;
The increase in routing hubs may lead to a more efficient routing algorithm being used;
And in combination with the increasing speed of web-pages loading;
Means that despite the significant increase in the number of web-pages, despite there being an increase in the number of hops required to navigate from one web-page, there may be no discernable increase in time for this process to occur;
c. )
The semantic web is based on data and enables computer systems to understand the meaning of information and its relation to other pieces of information;

this increased usability is dependent on the ability of the different computers to process the intended meaning of content better; however, giving information more expressive power may come at an expense of usability; for example, a language such as RDF can be highly expressive power, but requires the user to specify relations of information to other information; in some cases, it may be beneficial to create shared databases (i.e. increase the usability); but, there may be other cases where the increased expressivity leads to a decrease in usability;

d. )

embedded, devices are integrated into their environment; context aware, these technologies can adapt to the needs of the user; machine learning, these technologies can learn from previous behaviors;

e. )
Collective intelligence is the intellectual by product of a group of people working together;
This ability to harness the benefits of collective intelligence have been made possible by the development of the internet;
Collective intelligence can be used for a variety of purposes, for example linked to social media (Facebook and Twitter), gaming sites (Online Multiplayer games), Scientific research (Large hadron Collider and Wikipedia;
Collective intelligence benefits from the open sharing of resources and may allow for a more rapid evolution of ideas than ‘traditional’ methods; Collective intelligence may not have a central authority, so the user created information may be considered to be factual when it is not; Collective intelligence may lead to a disruption in the way that knowledge is stored or classified, i.e. the development of folksonomies in place of ontologies;

The lack of a formal organizational structure may lead to the acquisition of the collective intelligence being potentially piecemeal or haphazard; There may be no owner of this additional knowledge, so it may not be stored or maintained in the most efficient manner;

Question

Southend Council in England is considering whether to use Pepper, a humanoid robot, to assist some elderly residents that live in care homes. These elderly residents suffer from memory loss and would rely on Pepper to direct them them to and from the local shops. Pepper uses ambient intelligence and is connected to the Internet of Things (loT).
Explain why Southend Council may have concerns about introducing Pepper for this purpose.

▶️Answer/Explanation

Ans:

The journey from the care home to the local shops may lead to Pepper encountering a large range of environments that may go beyond the ambient intelligence that Pepper posseses;
Which may mean that the information that Pepper can obtain from the environment by using ambient intelligence may be limited and lead to suboptimal decisions being taken, some of which could have serious consequences;
Some of the residents may have trust issues associated with relying on Pepper, or they have be too trusting and delegate all decision making to Pepper when it is not appropriate;
Families and carers for these residents may have concerns about what information is being collected and shared by Pepper;
There may be issues of accountability that have not been resolved should an accident occur when Pepper is acting as a decision maker;
There may be technical issues such as black spots where Pepper is unable to communicate with the loT that need to be addressed;
The trialing of Pepper may not have been sufficiently rigorous to train Pepper to act “correctly” in any given situation;

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