Science Fiction Is Not Social Reality -- The tech industry is inspired to create our world from linear, scripted science fiction stories.

July 21, 2018

      <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.

[...]

Alberto Cammozzo

Giacomo Tesio

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