<https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pxjd/science-fiction-is-not-soc...> Science Fiction is great. It is inspirational, it is fun to read, and it gives humans incredible ideas. However, Science Fiction is not a manual for making real things in the world without oversight, accountability, and knowledge of how its outcomes will affect society. Facial Recognition technology is already with us. Amazon’s Rekognition <https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/> makes a fairly easy toolkit developers can use, and Microsoft’s Azure can identify emotions as well as who is experiencing them <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/?v=18.05>. Apple “uses advanced face recognition technology to group photos by person <https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/>" in iPhoto and on phones, and offers FaceID for unlocking phones <https://www.computerworld.com/article/3235140/apple-ios/apples-face-id-the-i...> with a picture. Other companies use the technology as well. Even Adobe offers Facial Recognition as part of its Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC <https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/face-recognition.html>. We’ve started to see the technology creep a bit at a time into various parts of our lives. So far, in the US, we might not have noticed Facial Recognition much, except as a novelty on our devices, but it is being deployed in ways that are beginning to give us pause and concern, as we learn about them, such as being deployed in K-12 schools <https://www.wired.com/story/realnetworks-facial-recognition-technology-schoo...>, or aiding police departments <https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3k4dq5/amazon-rekognition-facial-...> on the back-end, or being considered to augment the cameras police officers are already wearing <https://www.npr.org/2018/05/12/610632088/what-artificial-intelligence-can-do...> One central issue for Facial Recognition and other new unproven technologies is that when big companies, with access to reach millions of people decide to “road test” this type of big surveillance, its implications become very real, very fast. Last year I wrote thathumans are becoming “algorithm chow,” <https://medium.com/itp-musings/they-sow-they-reap-how-humans-are-becoming-al...> in that the data that we generate feeds the algorithms in companies such as Amazon, that in turn use our ‘data food’ to track and profile us, and use our footprint for surveillance. Last week, in an op-ed at /The Guardian/ <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/06/amazon-rekognition-fac...>, Peter Asaro, Kelly Gates, and other academic researchers wrote that Amazon is not only building a “facial recognition infrastructure,” it is also collecting “a huge amount of personal information about people, including … what they watch and read” and via Echo and Alexa, “what people say in their homes.” They describe this data practice threat as a “massive, automated surveillance apparatus” that requires an “equally vast system for oversight,” which has “not been developed.” It likely won’t be. To understand why, it is important to understand who the people that are developing these devices are, and why they are building what they are building. Their wealth, <https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/02/investing/apple-cash-quarter-trillion/index...> resources, and reach surpass that of governments. Additionally, regulations take time to form when new technology is introduced. This is why there have been so many calls to action from scholars, ethicists, and some tech employees. We’re worried, and rightly so. My research examines human agency and choice in the context of automation, and my doctoral dissertation studied Silicon Valley makers and producers over a period of 8 years. I understand innovation, and in particular “disruptive innovators.” There are two possible reasons these people and the productions that they are making are dangerous: the literal interpretation of Science Fiction as an influence, and the misapplication of the Pareto Principle. *Science Fiction is not social reality* Tech creators and tech billionaires are influenced by Science Fiction for different reasons. Some of these have to do with the narrative of the ‘hero outsider’ who uses their knowledge and skill to fix a problem through engineering a solution or through adapting tools and technology in new ways to solve some type of problem. Other reasons have to do with creating a Utopian society that is “bettered” through time-saving devices that are automated. The doors in /Star Trek/, the just-in-time data knowledge and data access in any number of films: /Bladerunner/, /Star Wars/, /Minority Report/, etc. and books all are delivered seamlessly in Science Fiction. When things do break, there is often an engineering solution. Even when Science Fiction turns against mankind, as it did in /2001: A Space Odyssey/, the gadgets and gear are shown as sufficiently technologically inspiring, so much so that even though it was a warning film of sorts, that element becomes minimized in favor of recreating “cool technology.” Thus, one myth is that in Science Fiction, a problem is solved because the human engineers were there to apply engineering and tech solutions to solve the problem, and another myth is that automation is seamless and knowledge is easily delivered in relevant contexts to appropriate parties. The reality is that in Science Fiction, problems are solved because the writers wrote a solution; physical objects worked in perfect just-in-time automation; and data and knowledge was delivered accurately in real time because all of those solutions were described to work in ways that are not fully formed, or real. Additionally, those tech creators and tech billionaires who are influenced by Science Fiction seem to assume that because things in Science Fiction work in the society and culture of those created future-set universes, there is an expectation bias that they will work in our real life and present, without much testing or oversight. Gadgets, services, and technologies work in Science Fiction because it is fiction. They work because it is a narrative, and as such, their authors or filmmakers showed them working. They work because in fiction, it is very easy to make things work, because they aren’t real and don’t need to actually work. Realizing the unreal from fiction will not make that realization work in the same way in real life. It can’t. The context, timeframe, and people are different. Most importantly, Science Fiction is fiction. [...]