Do you trust your computer? New film explores perils of technology
Do you trust your computer? New film explores perils of
technology
Chris Paine’s documentary looks at the potential dangers
of our intimate relationship with smartphones and laptops
Charles Bramesco Thu 16 Aug 2018 05.00 EDT
In all likelihood, you are currently reading this article
on a device that contains all the salient parts of your life. You’ve given it
your bank account information, and use it to move your money around. It’s privy
to your conversations with loved ones and work associates, perhaps even words
uttered out loud in private moments. It knows your schedule, where you are at
any given moment, what you buy, what music you listen to, and who you should
date.
Chris Paine’s new documentary Do You Trust This Computer?
wonders if that might not contain some potential for disaster down the line.
In fact, it’s really more of a film essay, in the
methodical way it introduces, dissects and draws conclusions from ideas applied
to real-world developments. Having tried narrowing his focus to a single topic
in the 2006 breakout Who Killed the Electric Car?, Paine decided to go wide for
this project, weaving together far-reaching trends and headlines to form a more
holistic meditation on the theme of technology.
“With this film, we wanted to pick apart the stuff we
take for granted,” Paine tells the Guardian. “We wanted to say: ‘What is the
reality behind these things? Which anxieties are well-founded, and what’s just
fear?’”
It’s hard not to enter full-on panic mode as Paine blows
through digital threats to life as we know it as if from apocalyptic
flashcards. While advances like artificial intelligence, increased automation
and algorithmic learning have propelled humanity into a faster and more
convenient future, they have paved the way for some chilling developments as
well.
“There are tentpole concerns,” Paine explains. “The
danger of autonomous weapons, the danger of election tampering and other
hacking, the hazards of overpersonalization – these are part of the
‘existential risk’ we’ve covered in the three years of working on this film …
People are very fast to trust things that take care of them. We trust airplane
autopilots, and we trust the FAA to make sure the pilot’s not flying under the
influence or something. Like machines or governments, digital programs have a
real relationship with the humans that use them. When we go to a computer
program to buy from an online marketplace, purchase flight tickets or book a
hotel, we trust that the algorithms in place are giving us good information,
the best prices.”
The former head of an internet company that was sold
before the dotcom bubble’s big pop, Paine spent the interim years learning all
he could about the technology sector. He sees humanity approaching a reckoning
with itself, as we turn more of our high-level thought over to software and
more of our physical function to automatons. To ensure that qualities like
privacy, safety and agency don’t become things of the past, it falls to us to
self-regulate.
“There are simple ways to minimize your digital
footprint,” Paine says. “Covering your phone and computer’s camera, so they’re
not always broadcasting your face to whoever happens to have access to them is
one. But with this film, the push is mostly to create awareness, to call on our
congressional bodies to push back against companies like Apple and Google. You
don’t have to throw away your computer and go completely offline – that’s just
difficult to do, practically speaking.”
He continues: “Changing the culture of technology
requires getting different types of people into available jobs. More women,
yes, but also people from the arts. People with a background in ethics, or
philosophy. This idea of the outsiders having some measure of control could be
a big part of the solution … It’s part legislation, part internal revision of
the system.”
Paine places an emphasis on action over terrified
paralysis, offsetting each disturbing morsel of information with a whiff of
hope. He doesn’t want to come off as the tinfoil-hatted luddite that tech
giants often claim their most ardent opponents are. He’s more sober-minded than
that, both aware of the stratospheric stakes and confident that managing them
represents the only way forward. After all, he’s the first one to describe
himself as a “technophile”.
He zeroes in on a lack of awareness as the chief problem,
citing the embarrassing showing from a congressional committee hearing that had
to ask Mark Zuckerberg what Facebook does and how it produces money during his
deposition. (In a film that features Elon Musk musing about his vision of
digitized empire on camera, Zuckerberg stands out as the most glaring absence.
“You know well enough how difficult it is to get a hold of him,” Paine joked.
“The Guardian broke the Cambridge Analytica story.”)
Paine contrasts that ignorance with the signing of the
Copenhagen letter, part plea and part pledge for the world’s top innovators to
do and be better.
Mindfulness is key, the simple act of remaining conscious
about the invisible ways daily life has been infiltrated by evolving machines.
Common consumers cannot go half-cocked into the coming decades if we hope to
survive under the small handful of billionaires calling more and more of the
shots. Paine tries not to get too melodramatic over the course of his
interview, but even he can’t deny that privileging healthy cynicism over blind
faith could be a matter of life and death:
“To a computer, the security systems of the world’s
largest nuclear mainframes are just a game, so we need to be careful if we’re
going to teach them to be master game-players.” He chuckles. “What could go
wrong?”
Do You Trust This Computer? is released in New York on 17
August and digitally in the US on 21 August with a UK date yet to be announced
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