Those who create future technologies should also fear their power.
The MIT Media Lab is one of the most visible parts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — both as an imposing glass-and-metal edifice in Cambridge and as an endless source of new technologies, from Lego Mindstorms and Guitar Hero, to e-ink, touchscreens, and in-vehicle GPS. Pattie Maes, the founder and director of the lab’s influential Fluid Interfaces research group, has spent much of her career investigating artificial intelligence, cognitive augmentation, and human-computer interaction, and in recent years, she says, she’s become increasingly conscious of those technologies’ capacity for bleak unintended consequences. So, turning to a pop-culture touchstone that addresses some of those darker repercussions, this year she’s giving all her new grad students an unusual assignment: watch every episode of the dystopian science fiction show Black Mirror.
“I just think that as designers of computer technologies that will get into the hands of 2.5 billion people, that anyone who was involved in designing new services and new interfaces should really think carefully about what impact the technologies they develop will have on society and on people’s lives,” she said. “Black Mirror is of course a very negative version of how things can go wrong, but I think it’s useful for all of the students and anyone involved in the development of new digital services and systems to look at that and keep that in mind as something to avoid.”
The Digital Human, Series 20, Episode 2: Symbiosis
