Greed. Lack of ethics.

Many years ago. I think it was like 2016-17 ish. I interviewed at a university for a grad program that’s basically “psychology -engineering”. Designing things to work with human psychology. Aka human factors psychology

(I ended up doing a different degree).

During this interview thing. I was there 2 days. It’s like an event. You meet professors and tour labs. See what other grads are working on and you have lunch and dinner with current grads and professors.

So a professor was talking about developing tech to do eye tracking on phones. So they could see what you were looking at on the screen and for how long.

Now at this time I knew a little bit about eye tracking methods. Firstly I pointed out that it would be impossible for it to be very accurate without stabilizing the head (as is done in research), usually with a chin mount that holds the head still. But the guy said it didn’t need to be that accurate as the intent was marketing. See what items people look at when scrolling on shopping apps/sites. And see how long they look at it.

I also pointed out that this was highly unethical because it’s using physiological data to manipulate someone into spending money. Indiscriminately.

I said What about people with a shopping addiction.? Or kids using their parents credit cards. And you would be using this data to psychologically manipulate people for purchases but the data could be used in all sorts of other ways that really even more unethical.

The idea was that if someone showed interest by looking at an item longer then that item would be presented again by the app. Multiple times even. To encourage purchase.

Or to show items that were similar to try to seal the deal with what the person was finding appealing.

Possibly with price alterations to encourage purchase.

When I said again that this was obviously unethical. As a scientist our goal should not be to manipulate the public I was told “someone’s going to do it, it might as well be us so we get paid for it”.

I was very surprised that this came with chuckles and agreement from other students.

Another professor I talked to about her work was investigating devices that could help people drive who were hearing impaired. So it was quite the contrast.

I did not get offered a PhD position but they did offer me admission to their masters program that was 50k a year. Near D.C. 2 year program. (Combo positiond are typically “free” in a manner of speaking. Highly competitive but that’s how it’s done). I wasn’t interested in paying them 200k for a master’s (after taking loans for living expenses too).

I also learned later they don’t even have masters/PhD program combos. Which is what it said on their website and I specifically applied to that. They also gave me a 2 week notice for the interview.

You ever buy a plane ticket 2 weeks ahead? $$$$$

They didn’t reimburse me for that either. Which is customary for these interview invites. Typically travel and lodging is covered by the university. They had me stay in some graduates house. They had like 6 roommates.

Cheap-ass, greedy, no ethics, bastards.

GMU