IB Digital Society Topic 4 - Contexts - Digital Society Key Definitions

Honesty and fairness in learning and research, including doing your own work and giving credit for others' ideas. Generative AI strains it, because tools can produce work for a student and reliable detection of AI writing has not proven possible.

The design of digital systems so that people with disabilities can use them, through features like screen readers, captions, and alternative ways to input. Well-designed systems widen inclusion, while poorly designed ones create new barriers.

An approach where software adjusts the content, pace, or difficulty for each learner based on how they are performing, rather than giving everyone the same fixed path. It aims to give more practice where a student struggles and more challenge where they are strong.

Making a physical object by building it up layer by layer from a digital design, allowing goods to be produced on demand close to where they are needed.

A chatbot, built on AI, designed to act as a friend, confidant, or romantic partner that remembers a user and is always available. It can offer comfort and reduce loneliness, but only simulates care and can foster dependence or expose vulnerable users to harm.

The laws, rules, standards, and oversight that guide how AI is developed and used. Because it varies widely between countries and is often slower than the technology, governance of AI is uneven and incomplete.

Systematic, unfair outcomes produced by a computer system, often because the data it learned from under-represents some groups or encodes past inequality. In healthcare it can mean a tool works well for some patients and poorly for others.

The use of software and algorithms, rather than human managers, to assign tasks, monitor performance, and make decisions about workers, common on gig and platform work.

Building a picture of a person from their online behaviour, then sorting them into groups to target content and ads. It can infer sensitive traits such as age, ethnicity, or sexuality that were never disclosed, raising concerns about consent, privacy, and discrimination.

A field of computer science dedicated to building systems that can replicate human intelligence and answer complex queries.

The idea that human attention is a scarce, valuable resource that platforms compete to capture and sell to advertisers, shaping media to be as engaging and hard to put down as possible.

Technology that overlays digital content onto a view of the real world, through a phone screen or glasses, adding to what you see rather than replacing it.

The use of software, often AI, to make or heavily shape decisions about people, such as allocating benefits or flagging fraud, with little or no human involvement. It is fast and consistent but can encode bias and remove the chance to explain or appeal a decision.

The use of technology to perform tasks without human intervention.

A digital system that can sense its environment and act to reach a goal with little or no human control. It need not have a physical body, so it is a broader category than a robot.

Datasets so large, fast-moving, and varied that ordinary tools cannot store or process them, usually described by the four Vs: volume, velocity, variety, and veracity.

The diversity of living organisms living in a biological environment.

A shared, append-only record made of blocks linked by cryptographic codes, so that any later tampering is easy to detect and the data stays trustworthy without a central authority.

A system that reads signals from the brain and translates them into commands for a computer or device, letting a person act by intention alone. It is used to restore lost function, such as movement or communication, and raises questions about enhancement and control.

The total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an activity, product, or organization, usually expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. For a digital system it spans manufacturing, operation, and disposal.

Paying for goods and services electronically rather than with physical cash, for example by card, bank transfer, or mobile app.

An economic model that keeps materials in use as long as possible through repair, reuse, refurbishment, and recycling, in contrast to a linear make-use-dispose model.

A non-expert individual that participates in scientific research.

Software, increasingly built on AI and machine learning, that analyses medical data and offers a clinician suggestions, such as flagging a likely diagnosis or a suspicious region on a scan. It supports the human decision rather than replacing it.