Tara Gangu / E-PORTFOLIO

One’s prime years of learning occur in the first few years of their lives, undergoing immense development and growth, thus it is pivotal for them to have access to early education in order to implement the skills and resources required in the future. Future career paths and employment and most importantly the learning that they participate in future will be much more effective and imply long term effects. The Victorian government (2017) released an article reinforcing the significance of early education as the experiences and interactions a child participates in can contribute greatly to the child’s cognitive development and mental growth as well as social exposure. The article also outlines that positive experiences attribute to health development, whereas negative interactions and exposure results in neglect and abuse and can contribute to emotional and behavioural issues in the child’s future (p. 2). This negative effect has been evident in the Indigenous and Aboriginal community where the children’s access to effective early education is limited and the quality of learning when young is restricted. Early childhood education holds significant importance as it establishes fundamental and basic knowledge that will ensure both short and long term outcomes. Brennan and Adamson (2014) both enhances the skills required for the workforce and helps children integrate into society (p. 2). These programs advocate for social integration and ultimately boosts future employability. The ECEC policy highlighted that the development of a well grounded foundation in early years, would be reflective in future opportunities and learning capacity. Subsequently, equitable access to early education is extremely crucial for effective growth and development of a child. Burger et al (2009) revealed that children coming from disadvantaged families experience difficulties in education, as they begin school with fewer ‘academic skills’ than their more advantaged counterparts. Conclusively, this hinders their cognitive development in future learning years. The article also reinforces the importance of preschool programs in providing ‘equal education opportunities’ and combating social inequality (p. 141).

Language is a significant component of life and it rapidly evolves, parallel to “demographic trends, new technology and international communication”(Graddol D, 2004). Whilst there is a progressive and innovative perception of Artificial Intelligence and Human Language Technology in society, it’s limitations restrict its ability to contribute to the future of language entirely. I strongly believe that as technology in the AI and HLT industry advances, the future of language will perhaps see computerised agents acquire the ability to process natural language similar to the way of humans. If these limitations can be resolved in the future, AI and HLT industry will greatly advance language and communication. 

The online world and its endless innovative possibilities has opened a new, modern language and speech system beyond human to human interactions.Currently, the industry of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Language Technology (HLT) has contributed to an evolutionary impact on language, in developing speech and communication in computerised agents. The abilities of AI and HLT include the agents to use it’s internal representation to reason with its external environment by “manipulating elements of the representation,” which is the inputted, preprogrammed data (Tecuci G, 2012). Allowing people to communicate with those speaking different languages, allowing to undergo tasks and information processing are the functions of AI and HLT. They are also able to, depending on how they’re programmed, interact with humans, modify requests, clarify requests, or even refuse certain requests (Tecuci G, 2012). Despite the hype, there remains multiple obstacles that limit the ability of language in the future to solely depend on computerised systems. John Searle’s philosophical approach to AI was, firstly, whether a machine could think, which he concluded to be possible, as we as humans are subsequently machines that can process and understand information. Then he went on to consider whether an artifact, a man-made machine can think, AI can mimic a human sensory and nervous system, so it is possible. This ability for machines to respond to speech and instructions is known as the Minimal Condition of an AI user, which is demonstrated first hand with programs such as Siri, “OK, Google” and Amazon’s Alexa. Despite, the possibilities of AI in the future, its number of limitations restrict it’s progression and improvement. The ability for interpreting natural language is a difficult action by AI, due to the complexity and ambiguity of natural language that involves, morphology, syntax, discourse and semantics (Tecuci G, 2012). 

An ongoing culture of corruption is significantly destructive and economically damaging to corrupt organisations. Corruption occurs on a managerial level and employee level.

Unfortunately, organisational culture can negatively influence an organisation into corruption. The concept of the social cocoon has been described to be the network of assumptions, norms and values that promote subtle corruption and it is “a special language to make corruption appear harmless,” (Anand et al, 2005). This social cocoon has established employee comfortability with participating in corruption and normalising it. Corruption is an area that requires close investigation as it tarnishes the ethicality and morality that organisations must follow, it offers unhealthy advantage and allows exploitation of organisation.

The inability to closely assess and critique corrupt organisations is caused by the voluntary lack of cooperation from organisations who fear of their reputation being tarnished or their criminal behaviour being exposed. An interview investigation was conducted, which collected interviews from 14 independent contractors from Germany, Austria and the USA revealed the common shared characteristics of corrupt organisations.

“The term “addiction” implies psychological dependence and thus is a mental or cognitive problem, not just a physical ailment.” (Avena, Rada & Hoebel, 2008). Addiction is categorised into two sectors; psychological addiction and neurological addiction. Psychological addiction is related to behavioural involvement such as gambling and sex addiction, whereas neurological addiction is biologically related, involving the excessive consumption of a substance. Addiction consists of 4 subterms, bingeing, withdrawal, craving and sensitization. Bingeing is the excessive intake of a substance after a period of abstinence and the body responds to the deprivation of consumption of a substance through withdrawal symptoms (Avena, Rada & Hoebel, 2008). Avena, Rada and Hoebel explore these 4 terms in relation to drug abuse parallel to sugar consumption, highlighting that sugar addiction is in fact similar to drug addiction as it involves the 4 stages of addiction. The neural responses that substance abuse triggers is also known as sugar intake, however there are differences in the biology of these two responses. For example, cross-sensitization in the context of drugs includes the ability for drugs other than the addictive drug to stimulate the same neurological processes within the body and addictive behaviour. Similarly, intermittent sugar consumption cross-sensitizes with drugs of abuse. A study where rats were injected with amphetamine and a week later they were given 10% sucrose, demonstrated these results. The rats experienced hyperactivity as a response to the experiment (Avena, Rada & Hoebel, 2008). As revealed by Avena, Rada and Hoebel (2007), “Hedonic rewarding characteristic of sugar has been recently suggested by some to have abuse potential that is similar to classical drugs by stimulating shared brain reward pathways involved in drug addiction.” (Avena, 2007; Avena, Rada & Hoebel, Avena, Bocarsly, & Rada, 2009). According to biological research, dopamine is intermittently increased by addictive drugs and causes a dopinogenic reaction is triggered by palatable food consumption. Thus the parallel reaction that both sugar consumption and drug addiction share convey how excessive sugar intake can be categorised as a sugar addiction.