Gary C. Woodward | The Perfect Response

At the BBC, the approximate equivalent of going to the wrong door to greet a visitor is not that unusual. Such as the nature of setting up newscasts using “Smart” A.I.

Those fearing what will happen when artificial intelligence takes over more complex human functions can look to a lot of evidence to see that humans will still matter. Advanced A.I. technology offers astounding opportunities to pass off fakes as real. For example, film scenes are now often composed by putting actors against a green screen in an empty studio and electronically inserting a digital background from virtually anywhere. These kinds of economies used to be obvious in films using rear screen projections. Somehow even the great Hitchcock didn’t see how hackneyed they looked. But it can now be hard to tell if an actor is indeed gazing over a spectacular view of the Golden Gate, or just clutching a hand rail mock-up in Culver City.

Most of us already deal with corporate A.I. on almost a daily basis. But their synthetic nature of chatbots are pretty easily revealed in their inabilities to listen, and their laughable indifference to the complex human cues of our “otherness.” (“Press 1 to hear these choices again” is often about as good as it gets.)

Computer Code Calling the Shots

In both funny and interesting ways, nothing so easily represents the increased chaos that awaits us all than the “smart” cameras that have been used by BBC television news. These key devices occasionally go rogue, leaving confusion in their wake. To be sure, there are still news readers trying their best in the relatively new spaces within London’s Broadcasting House. But the management of what is arguably the world’s best broadcast news organization has remained committed to producing daily newscasts with software that manages most sound and video on their news sets: first, in the large circular space of what was Studio E, and more recently, in a newer version of it on a lower level. The original set encircled a news reader in a ring of automated cameras on rails, with sometimes funny outcomes. Without planning it, BBC World News occasionally runs its own version of “The Show that Goes Wrong.” Certainly not all the time, but still often enough to be enshrined in any number of YouTube clips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWVOaneKfe8&t=52s

The most obvious problem was that the cameras-on-tracks would leave news presenters to chase down a place in front which ever one was “live” at the time. Sometimes a presenter was only partly in the frame. At other times a rogue camera crossed into a shot, leaving viewers puzzled and presenters apologizing for the unwanted intrusion. Not infrequently, a news presenter was the last to know that where a camera was aimed and if their mic was on. As one cheerfully noted while trying to run to another part of the set, “You can pretend that you haven’t noticed.” Others complained of “gremlins” running the show. When things do not go as planned, the results can be the approximate equivalent of going to the wrong door to greet a visitor. Interestingly, the current group of automated cameras from the Norwegian company Electric Friends even have a face-reading capability.

Luckily, the BBC’s computer bugs are usually self-revealing, and a useful a reminder that our intelligence is reasonably quick in detecting situations that lack veracity.

We are well into in an era when idiot computers have made a hash of some routine functions. The real danger is when their presence is not easily detectable. A new vocabulary will need to be developed to communicate our displeasure at the appearance of misrepresentations and robots passed off as the real thing. Given its nature, electronic fakes can be obvious or harmless, but they can also be another form of wire fraud passed on by human originators as they real thing.

We wonder why there is so much social chaos eating into the once secure centers of American life. Guns in schools or workplaces are obvious examples. Among a complex chain of causes, low commitment to societal institutions is having it’s effects.

A few years ago a local bank ran a series of print ads of a comfortable family relaxing on a spacious patio that was meant to signal money. The headline for the private bank was “You Did it All by Yourself.” The tone-deaf headline was meant to pander to the affluent on how they arrived at their privileged position. It perhaps said more than the bank intended. An old commonplace has it that it really does not ‘take a village,’ nor the shoulders of others’ to succeed. Instead, as the durable old commonplace has it, gumption and hard work are the keys to accessing American prosperity. The message many of us carry around and still promote is that we are masters of our own destiny; failure or success will depend on our efforts. In this simplified logic everyone is an island responsible for their success, obligated only to themselves. So goes the fantasy.

The misguided impression that gun ownership represents a form of personal freedom

What this view nurtures is a long and continuing suspicion of institutions intended to nurture a civil society. We still hear the tired overstatement that prairie settlers, immigrants and nineteenth century entrepreneurs provided for themselves, partially taking on responsibilities to deliver justice, protect property, and find our own pathways out of the depths of poverty. Other social goals like the education of children by professionals, and providing basic medical care for all are now contested territories, with a vocal minority doubting the virtues of these traditional social functions. Florida is a case in point, where even the accurate portrayal of the nation’s origin stories, or the value of virus vaccines, are officially challenged. Arguably, the populace of the continent-spanning United States has never uniformly committed to institutions promoting public welfare. Mistrust of authority and disparagement of fiscally hobbled public services seem embedded in out national character.

Consider evidence of decreased faith in major institutions. As researchers at the political website Five Thirty Eight recently noted, “disillusionment with pretty much every major institution” has set in. They cited a recent Gallup public survey found that Americans registered a one year drop in confidence in virtually every kind collective enterprise. For example, in 2022 “high confidence” in the military fell five points to 64%; confidence in the police dropped to 45%; the medical system to 38%; religious groups down to 21%; the supreme to court, 25%; the public schools to 24%; big business to 14%; and confidence in congress fell into a cellar of just 7%. All of their categories showed a decline in spite of real advances in child and senior citizen protections.

What is left of the social structure stressed by a higher level of fear and the enduring birthright myth of survival by any means. It is little wonder that disenchanted youth believe they must be their own providers and protectors. At this age, guns are now the leading cause of death.

The idea of the self-sustaining individual can easily fuel the view that, among other things, a firearm is a necessary defense. We can take our pick of either the founder’s woolly wording of the Second Amendment, or the woeful misapplication of it by the Supreme Court (District of Columbia vs Heller, 2010). In either case the U.S. is now awash in guns that kill as intended. Never has a claim to freedom carried such a destructive outcome.

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