Yesterday one of my long-standing fears was confirmed: futurists are considered moral authorities.
The Intercept published an article entitled Microsoft Pitches Technology That Can Read Facial Expressions at Political Rallies, and written by Alex Emmons, which described a new Microsoft product that is meant to be used at large events like the Superbowl, or a Trump rally, to discern “anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, neutral, sadness or surprise” in the crowd.
Spokesperson Kathryn Stack, when asked whether the tool could be used to identify dissidents or protesters, responded as follows:
“I think that would be a question for a futurist, not a technologist.”
Can we parse that a bit?
First and foremost, it is meant to convey that the technologists themselves are not responsible for the use of their technologies, even if they’ve intentionally designed it for sale to political campaigns.
So yeah, I created this efficient plug-and-play tool of social control…
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