{"id":117207,"date":"2019-09-27T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/behind-the-headlines-artificial-intelligence-voyeuristic-mattresses-and-pink-eyed-terminators\/"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:42:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T21:42:51","slug":"behind-the-headlines-artificial-intelligence-voyeuristic-mattresses-and-pink-eyed-terminators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/creative\/behind-the-headlines-artificial-intelligence-voyeuristic-mattresses-and-pink-eyed-terminators\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Headlines: Artificial Intelligence, Voyeuristic Mattresses, and Pink-Eyed Terminators"},"content":{"rendered":"

It sounds like the beginnings of a bad joke: “What do artificial intelligence, voyeuristic mattresses, and pink-eyed Terminators have in common?”<\/p>\n

The answer is even more amazing: Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n

That’s right. While he was away from parliament, the Prime Minister delivered a, well, rather strange speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In fact, he seemed as confused as his audience as he delivered one of the most astonishing speeches on technology, artificial intelligence, and voice search I have ever heard.<\/p>\n

I like to think I have a reasonably good grasp of all things digital\u2014especially in the realm of voice activation, per our recent white paper<\/a>\u2014but even I wasn’t prepared for the dystopia Mr Johnson would have you believe lies ahead of us.<\/p>\n

“When I think of the great scientific revolutions of the past\u2014print, the steam engine, aviation, the atomic age\u2014I think of new tools that we acquired but over which we, the human race, had the advantage, which we controlled. That is not necessarily the case in the digital age.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also made the case that “it takes real effort to conceal your thoughts from Google”, although our aforementioned research found that the search giant isn’t yet the most accomplished mind-reader: while it excels at local search queries, Google Assistant struggles to interpret questions that require logic and reasoning<\/strong>\u2014despite having access to a virtually unlimited amount of data.<\/p>\n

Cloudy with a chance of surveillance<\/h2>\n

Concerns about privacy and data<\/a> also came up, with the revelation that “your mattress will monitor your nightmares”. I actually laughed out loud when Mr Johnson referenced data not being stored in the “innards” of the devices (let me know if I’m getting too technical in my terminology here) but rather our every move, thought, and action will be recorded in “…some great cloud of data that looms ever more oppressively over the human race, a giant dark thundercloud, waiting to burst.”<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

I asked one of our Senior Web Analysts<\/a>, Gavin Bowick, what he thought about this frankly terrifying weather forecast. This was his response:<\/p>\n

“To continue Boris’s analogy, the problem is not the rain\u2014it’s how the rain is directed, harnessed, and used, The same goes with data. From the lives saved by the collection of location-based data during a cholera outbreak in 1854, to organisations today such as DataKind (datakind.org) using data to drive humanitarian projects around the world, data can be used to drive significant and positive differences to our lives. While it is critically important that data is collected, stored, and used responsibly, I am excited by the projects, research, and breakthroughs that data-led research and analysis will uncover.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Gavin’s optimism isn’t shared by Mr Johnson, who instead suggested we could be heading towards divine intervention (“any scientific advance is punished by the Gods”) and stated that we face a choice between “an Orwellian world, designed for censorship, oppression and control, or one of emancipation and learning.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, a fair point, and worthy of consideration. One would hope that the freedoms of information sharing, empowerment, individual growth\u2014and especially marketers respecting users’ privacy<\/a>\u2014would allow us to drive each other forward as a people, using the internet as a unifying medium for us to communicate our ideas.<\/p>\n

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