Thang Nguyen 555

“It says here….” ” perhaps you might like this too”….”the machine doesn’t recognize your name, face and voice.”

Machine is good when it narrows down choices. 

Machine is not good when it skews the results with inherently- bias recommendations. Which coders wouldn’t carry around his/her grandfather’s and father’s built-in bias or side comments at dinner table which in turn infect their work creation and culture.

When I was interning at ABC Affiliate as an ENG photographer, I learned two things: got to get footage on the air quick (see Broadcast News – how an intern slid under the desk), and two, out of all the possibilities for filming, we only film (at the time, we were transitioning from film to all tapes) a few seconds, then we do the stand-up, after that re-action shots if it’s an interview. Of course, the picture – a thousand words – was reflective of our own taste, training and tendency to zoom in on “pretty” girls than trash collector strike.

Now, reading that AI will soon replace police (Hong Kong) and photographer, cashier and concierge (Tokyo), truckers and traders etc…

I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it did. They have re-programmed Matchmaking softwares for HR applications, in other words, machines are replacing machines.

No time for speed-date. Just job fair.

Of course with LinkedIn’s tiny photos, whoever got a good pic i.e. enough lighting and latest version of iPhone will have a competitive advantage ( first 6-second impression). 

Machine collects pics, our key words, our Likes, our buys and our friending to compile our personal profile. Of course it’s incomplete. But it is learning at deep-neuron level i.e. combing through years of scattered scanned files (Google book project), updated from billions of input and upload worldwide, to make a Mind.

Machine is doing the learning while we are asleep (our Pearl Harbor moment). Even Thomas Friedman ( The world is flat) couldn’t have predicted the speed and smart of machine spanning space and time. He barely scratched the surface in the tradition of Future Shock; then we need The world is flat 2.0 and Future Shock 3.0

From initial creation per WWII logistical necessity, algorithm progresses to Amazon supply chain and AWS. Allies’ bombers might not come back, but Amazon trucks & authorized agent’s always will (w/ a few exceptions e.g. deaths of drivers, a cause for contract termination). 

Back to machine bias. 

A darker skin tone will more likely be “recognized” faster in crime-prevention, while a foreign-sounding name has a harder time being short-listed. Perhaps they will work this “bug” into the next update ( like Hollywood would be more inclusive).

Hardware introduction e.g. 5G will take a decade to main-stream, but software ramp-up takes less, placing us in a perpetual Beta state, and our autonomy less and less relevant, digitally speaking.

Unless you have level 3 and above access to the big Machine.

Just receive your direct deposit and shut up: let the quants, the techs and the national security folks handle this ( while you handle your social security). Don’t agitate or ask question(s), especially questions about the built-in bias of the machine. 

You’ve got frequent traveler’s miles, high FICO scores and recommendations for jobs, friends and mates. Want more? OK, books, movies and adult toys? Sure, we can do that and more ( delivering on Sunday.) Keep clicking, filling out more forms, preferably online, to save a tree.

Immediately after the datasets get aggregated, rolled up and thumb prints collected, our attention, interests are deliverables to Adsense. Every online store is now targeting you, not just Target.

Voila. Big Brother knows it all, from Russia to China to North Korea. Data is to today, what Plastic was to the 60’s. 

It takes place right here, right now. At the corner store where you buy a pack of gums. 

No need to be paranoid. Just live, buy and travel. Until the day they come for you. Protest not, voice not your opinion, write nothing, post nothing. 

It’s not the 60’s when you need to beg “see me, feel me”… Now it’s the machine (certainly not Tommy’s pinball) that sees you, and it really really wants to “feel you” (at least, it tries to get you to smell the perfume – Macy’s cosmetic shop girl jobs are out).

Heck, don’t touch me. Ever. I will tell you when, but it’s my call. when it’s time. I can always yank out the tubes and walk out of any situation. It’s called Fee Will. I-m-relevant still. Defiant still. And unfortunately, prejudiced also ( against both machine and man). I watched and learned for hours from my father at dinner table to someday, today, become he. I totally inherited a blind spot, his, and he, his father’s.

So does the Machine, with its magnifying mistakes e.g. matching a bunch of morons to work at critically high-profile jobs, with access level higher than 3. Then group-think (moronism and cronyism) kicks in (confirmation bias). If the machine is not bias, then these “men” will, 100% of the time.

Seen any black faces and foreign sounding names lately on the news??? on Fox perhaps where you may find some Syrian refugees, whose names, faces and voices aren’t recognized by both man and machine. Instead, well perhaps, you might like this, ….since it says here…it doesn’t recognize your name, voice and face.