Prof. Jerzy Surma’s lecture
On February 7th we had the pleasure of hosting Jerzy Surma, a professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, who gave us a lecture on the mechanisms of operation of the world’s most popular platform for recording and watching short films using mobile devices, i.e. Tik-Tok. As a specialist in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and disinformation, he shared with students his invaluable knowledge about the potential threats posed to users by using applications such as Tik-Tok.
These inevitably include: a reduction in the ability to concentrate and a waste of valuable time, in the moment when the mental potential of young people is at its highest level and could be used by them to acquire specialized knowledge, skills necessary to function in the modern world and perform complex tasks in their future professional work.
Professor Surma also accurately pointed out that watching short video sequences is associated with limiting the understanding of the world to simple slogans, loss of the ability to think critically and susceptibility to manipulation and disinformation by entities whose goal is not to act to the benefit of young people, but to advertise specific products and services as well as turning the general public into thoughtless consumers focused on satisfying their simplest needs.
Finally, Professor Surma accurately pointed out yet another huge threat resulting from the fact that sensitive data about Tik-Tok users is collected on the servers of the People’s Republic of China, an authoritarian state, which can use it, e.g., to influence opinion leaders and, consequently, the entire society and undermine fundamental democratic processes such as elections.
The lecture gave us all a lot to think about and motivated us to ask ourselves many burning questions in the context of global problems which we all encounter on a daily basis.
