Yesterday, the Kaleidocast podcast released a narration of my story “Your Future is Pending,” read by the amazing Tonia Ransom.
My story concerns Martha, a woman who takes care of her sick father, while working as a technician repairing robots that keep people alive, while they play all day in virtual worlds. As Martha struggles to get by, constantly stymied by automated systems that frustrate her at every turn, her only light is a stray dog in the alley that she befriends.
If you want to skip my philosophizing below and just go listen, you can do that here. But read on if you want to hear me talk about how automated systems dehumanize us.
As I mentioned on the Project Xtopia Panel that discussed “Your Future is Pending,” the story was inspired by real-world events that happened to me.
A few years back I was having some health issues, and many, many, many times I had to sit on the phone, navigating my way through labyrinthine automated phone systems, trying to reach someone who might help me get what I needed. And oftentimes, when I finally got a human on the phone, I was met with the same response:
Well, my system says…
There was this inherent trust that the data on their computer screen was the final arbiter of truth, the red line between me getting the services I needed or me suffering in excruciating pain. There was no sense that I was a real, suffering human being in need of help. Instead, it was simply that the operator (or more often, an automated system) determined from a value in a text field (“request denied”) that the thing I desperately needed was unavailable to me.
Much like social media, in which opaque algorithms (that is, hidden manipulators) are determining what we see, someone, somewhere coded that algorithm to make that choice. Some executive or programmer or both chose to automate a decision process that might have seemed clever or wise at the time of its creation, but has some very real highly detrimental effects to folks down the line.
I know I’m not alone.
People tell me all the time that they encounter such difficulties in their life. And now, as more and more systems become automated, as we rely on AI to (for example) write our business proposals, determine what ads we see, write our term papers, determine who qualifies for healthcare, a mortgage, or financial help, to draw our pictures, determine who is innocent and who is guilty and who is worthy of suspicion — well, at what point do we recognize that these automated systems all have flaws, and that by taking away the human in the system we inherently dehumanize it, and that more and more people will not only fall through the cracks but get hurt or even killed?
My story, “Your Future is Pending,” is about such a scenario. Martha struggles to survive in a system that relies on automation for almost everything. And though she plays by the rules, though she works very hard to survive, the system determines that she isn’t deserving of help. So she decides to take things into her own hands.
You can listen here. Please note that this is a dark story.
I look forward to hearing your comments.
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