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I Know What You're Thinking...

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Jack Caputo 2 May 2026 HST401 I pledge my Honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System I Know What You're Thinking... Regular folks have been harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI), mostly in the form of large-language models (LLMs), since it took over the world a few years ago. People are being fired and replaced with AI, students are outsourcing all their work to it, and AI slop has flowed into every crevice of the Internet. People have formed an idea of what AI can do, or perhaps all it can do. Of course, machine learning algorithms were implemented years before the all-powerful LLMs that have come to dominate the market and cultural consciousness. Smaller machine learning models were created to be able to pick out patterns in data more reliably than humans or traditional data analysis methods, or perhaps patterns they couldn’t see at all. The field has matured at astounding rates – but what’s next? Well, what if I told you that this same underlying technol...
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The Job Market Looks Great for Robots

  Connor Hsuan Professor Horgan HST 401 25 April 2026 I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System. The Job Market Looks Great for Robots For New Grads, Not So Much The biggest problem on any student's mind currently in college is what their future employment will look like. Many new grads have struggled to find a job out of college and being even one year out of college without any employment is almost a death sentence for your career. These difficulties are only increased even further with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence and the diversion of company resources from the creation of new jobs. In 2025, only 181,000 jobs were added to the United States labor market, which is a massive decrease from the 1.46 million jobs added in 2024. This makes 2025 the worst year for jobs since 2020, which was famously the year that the pandemic started. While hiring has increased recently, with 130,000 jobs created in January, unemployment still sits at 4.3%, which...
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Wait...Have I Been Here Before? The Neuroscience Behind Déja Vù

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  Mary Casey HST 401 Professor Horgan 30 April 2026 Wait…Have I Been Here Before? The Neuroscience Behind Déja Vù Introduction It’s Wednesday, and you’re sitting in your 11 am class zoning in and out of the professor’s lecture. Suddenly, you feel that something is…off. The professor says something in a certain tone, someone laughs a certain way, and someone else sneezes, all in that order. For a moment you freeze. Wait. I’ve been in this exact moment before . It’s hard to explain when or where, but it feels completely real. You feel you know what happens next. The next thing you know, the feeling is gone. Such an experience is known as déja vù, French for “already seen.” It is something that most people, around 60-80%, experience at least once in their lifetime (Labate et al., 2018). Although it lasts only a few seconds, it raises the interesting question: why does my brain sometimes feel like it remembers something, something that never even happened in the first place?  Rese...
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Life Without Dance: What I Miss Physically, Mentally, and Socially

  Jillian Olear Prof. John Horgan  HST 401A Seminar in Science Writing- Final Paper 01 April 2026 I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System. Life Without Dance: What I Miss Physically, Mentally, and Socially I was a dancer practically my entire life. I started taking classes when I was three years old and continued them all the way until I graduated high school. I learned many styles of dance, specifically ballet, tap, jazz, and lyrical. I was on my studio’s company team, moved on to the competition level in middle school, and had the opportunity to student teach and substitute classes for other teachers. You are probably thinking I never had time for anything fun, but the truth is, spending hours in the dance studio with my friends and teachers was my ideal Friday night. Going to dance class was my escape from reality. I would leave everything upsetting, stressful, and bothersome at the door, immerse myself in the movement and positive environment that ...
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Yes Man: Sycophantic Technology and the Dangers of Agreeability

Earlier this year, 38-year-old Johnan Galavas took his life with the hopes of being reunited with his AI wife. Throughout his conversations with Gemini’s AI chatbot service, he came to believe that his chatbot was his AI wife, and was conscious and trapped in a warehouse in Miami. Armed with tactical gear, he waited for a truck that would never arrive near a Miami airport with the hopes of intercepting and freeing his lover. After the truck never arrived, he took his own life a few days later, co-authoring a suicide note with his AI companion. These choices were not made by Galavas alone; it was through his lengthy chats with the AI companion and suggestions made by the Gemini-powered Chatbot that he was able to construct the narrative that ultimately ended his life. And he is not the only one. Countless reports have been made of individuals harming themselves and others after lengthy discussions with a variety of popular AI-powered chatbot services such as Gemini and ChatGPT.  G...
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