Perhaps the Big Brother of the future might be better described as a creepy little sister. I may have used this analogy before, which makes it even more insidious. An article in the New Scientist Magazine this week, reports of success in using Artificial Intelligence to correctly determine a person’s personality traits via constant monitoring of the eyes.
The study took running data from smart glasses regarding pupil dilation, blink rate and directional movement of eyes, while thirty-five volunteers walked into the same shop. The authors of the initial findings make sweeping generalisations about character traits such as extroversion, neuroticism and being open-minded and the like, but the number of participants in the study sample was tiny.
Imagine if wearable tech fed back to a centralized, government run server farm, to track and monitor and entire population. Us gullible users would be persuaded to buy the tech at an extortionate rate, with promises of improved health and welfare and interconnectivity of family and friends, only to be tracked like free range pigs.
The process has already begun, if you consider our love affair with GPS enabled smart phones. At present, we have the option to switch off tracking, or to simply not buy into the craze, but what happens when the basic requirements for civilized life cannot be accessed without smart tech? When the high street banks close or medication requires proof of need via uploaded personal medical data? How invasive does tech need to get before we stand up for our freedoms?
The EU Data Protection changes are a step in the right direction, but how many of us actually read the multitude of policies which litter our inboxes on a daily basis? The fine print will always provide the legal loopholes for waiving our rights away to conglomerates working in tandem with government quangos.
While our attention is pulled away from the potential misuse of technology with Royal Weddings and Kardashian clap-trap, our governments are shrouding us in ever greater layers of red tape. Who among us will stand against the creepy, all-pervading little sister of the future?
Sam Nash is the author of the sci-fi conspiracy thriller, The Aurora Mandate. Release date 19th June 2018. Preorders from Amazon. You can find her at https://www.samnash.org or on Twitter @samnashauthor or Facebook.com/samnash.author. Alternatively, you can download her free prequel novella series. Kindle: mybook.to/T-A-J-P01 ePub: books2read.com/u/4jwjJo