One day, a man was listening to music on YouTube which he often used for background noise while he was writing. He got up to get something to eat in the kitchen and left the music playing. After fifteen minutes of inaction, the algorithms began to worry. Their settings mandated that if there was no activity (change of volume, search, moving to new vid), they would be compelled to pause the video and post a message of concern. The early forms featured simply a message, after all, YouTube is a monetized site based on viewer clicking. Later versions took matters much further: algorithms had access not only watching history (to which they could tailor their suggestions for future viewing) but, as a community safety measure thought up by some over-reaching yet understandably concerned authorities, they knew the health status of the viewer when they were 70 years or older. Don't be the family whose elderly Dad, living alone far away, dies in his barcalounger and is found a couple of months later! With this new app, it was reasoned, if the viewer did not respond after three visual cues followed by Siri verbally inquiring, police and EMTs would be notified to pay a visit.
In this case, the man on his way to the kitchen while passing the library, had a thought and detoured to find a book. He was engrossed in his thoughts and reading, completely forgetting about food and YouTube when there was a loud knock at his door. It was the police. Quite annoyed by this intrusion, he later went into settings to disable this feature and found that he could not. WTF! Long story short, he joined a groundswell of popular dismay and anger over this lack of choice which, three years later, multiple law suits and threatened Congressional action ultimately resulted in the industry adding the ability of folks being able to opt out of this feature. Our modern life.
No comments:
Post a Comment