Carta, Silvio

Malizia, Alessio

English

University of Hertfordshire Research Archive

09/10/2019 Science ﬁction could save us from bad technologyhttps://theconversation.com/science-ﬁction-could-save-us-from-bad-technology-123418 1/3AuthorsAlessio MaliziaProfessor of User Experience Design,University of HertfordshireSilvio CartaHead of Art and Design and Chair of theDesign Research Group, University ofHertfordshireAcademic rigour, journalistic ﬂairThe short film Slaughterbots depicts a near future in which swarms of micro dronesassassinate thousands of people for their political beliefs. Released in November 2017by academics and activists warning of the dangers of advanced artificial intelligence(AI), it quickly went viral, attracting over 3m views to date. It helped spark a public debate on the future of autonomous weapons and put pressure on diplomats meetingat the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons.But this kind of speculative science fiction storytelling isn’t just useful for attractingattention. The people who design and build advanced technology can use stories toconsider the consequences of their work and ensure it is used for good. And we thinkthis kind of “science fiction prototyping” or “design fiction” could help preventhuman biases from working their way into new technology, further entrenchingsociety’s prejudices and injustices.Ahmet Misirligul/ShutterstockScience ﬁction could save us from bad technologySeptember 24, 2019 1.04pm BSTSlaughterbots09/10/2019 Science ﬁction could save us from bad technologyhttps://theconversation.com/science-ﬁction-could-save-us-from-bad-technology-123418 2/3A bias can lead to the arbitrary preference of some categories (of results, people, or ideas) over others.For example, some people may be biased against hiring women for executive jobs, whether they areconscious of it or not.Technology built around data that records such bias can end up replicating the problem. For instance,recruitment software designed to select the best CVs for a particular job might be programmed to lookfor characteristics that reflect an unconscious bias towards men. In which case, the algorithm will endup favouring men’s CVs. And this isn’t theoretical – it actually happened to Amazon.Designing algorithms without considering possible negative implications has been compared todoctors “writing about the benefits of a given treatment and completely ignoring the side effects, nomatter how serious they are”.Some tech firms and researchers are trying to tackle the issue. For example, Google drew up a set of ethical principles to guide its development of AI. And UK academics have launched an initiative calledNot-Equal that aims to encourage greater fairness and justice in the design and use of technology.The problem is that, publicly, companies tend to deliver only a positive vision of the potentialconsequences of near-future technologies. For example, driverless cars are often portrayed as solvingall our transport issues from cost to safety, ignoring the increased dangers of cyberattacks or the factthey could encourage people to walk or cycle less.The difficulty in understanding how digital technologies work, especially those that are heavily drivenby obscure algorithms, also makes it harder for people to have a complex and comprehensive view ofthe issues. This situation produces a tension between a reassuring positive narrative and the vaguesuspicion that biases are embedded to some degree in the technologies around us. This is where wethink storytelling through design fiction can come in.Stories are a natural method of thinking about possibilities and complex situations, and we have beenhearing them all our lives. Science fiction can help us speculate on the impact of near-futuretechnologies on society, as Slaughterbots does. This can even include issues of social justice, like theway certain groups, such as refugees and migrants, can be excluded from digital innovations.Revealing the (possible) future09/10/2019 Science ﬁction could save us from bad technologyhttps://theconversation.com/science-ﬁction-could-save-us-from-bad-technology-123418 3/3Science ﬁction prototype Algorithm biasDesign fiction stories provide a novel way for designers, engineers and futurists (among others) tothink about the impact of technology from a human perspective and link this to possible future needs.With a mixture of logic and imagination, design fiction can reveal aspects of how technology may beadopted and used, starting conversations about its future ramifications.For example, the short story “Crime-sourcing” explores what might happen if AI was to usecrowdsourced information and a criminal database to predict who might commit a murder. Theresearchers found that because the database was full of people in minority ethnic groups who, forsocial reasons, were statistically more likely to reoffend, the “crime-sourcing” model was more likelyto wrongly suspect minorities than white people.You don’t have to be a talented writer or make a slick film to produce design fiction. Brainstormingactivities involving cards and storyboards have been used to develop design fiction and help developthe storytelling process. Making workshops that used these kinds of tools more common would enablemore engineers, entrepreneurs and policymakers to use this method of assessment. And making theresulting work publicly available would help to expose potential biases in technologies before theyaffect society.Encouraging designers to create and share more stories in this way would ensure the narrative thatunderpins new technology wouldn’t just present a positive picture, nor an extremely negative ordystopian one. Instead, people will be able to appreciate both aspects of what is happening around us.

Science fiction could save us from bad technology

http://uhra.herts.ac.uk/bitstream/2299/21724/1/Science_fiction_could_save_us_from_bad_technology.pdf

Science fiction could save us from bad technology

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