Alice McIlroy on Writers exploring AI and the threat of technology: why it is too important to leave public conversations to Tech Giants.

With the ongoing debate about AI influence on human life, now, I would argue, is when we need writers and artists to engage with the conversation around AI – through art – more than ever. It is too important a conversation to leave to those with a vested commercial interest in its advancement.

The role of artists and writers has always been to hold a mirror up to society, hasn’t it? To ask difficult questions and open debate, to navigate what it means to be human, to help us see our shared humanity, perhaps even probe issues around responsibility and morality. I believe human creative endeavour enables progress – progress in our humanity, something unchecked technological advancement threatens to endanger.

 Here are three thought-provoking 2023 books exploring moral dilemmas around AI and the threat of technology that are not to be missed:

MORE PERFECT by Temi Oh: In this futuristic novel and epic love story set in a technological age, the protagonist Moremi’s sister believes “technology will only entrench inequality deeper in our society,” unless we address issues of race and gender first. Moremi and her two sisters all respond differently to the adoption of the Pulse (an implant connecting the brain to the Panopticon network). Moremi initially embraces her Pulse, but it ultimately exacerbates her sense of isolation.

THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke: It is a nuanced exploration of online toxicity and the central character Ola's moral dilemma. Ola, who has made her name breaking #MeToo stories, wakes to discover her fiancé has been named online in a list of abusive men. The novel reflects on the difference between our online and offline personas, and the perils of being unable to distinguish real life from our digital selves.  

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE by Jo Callaghan: In her debut, Callaghan seamlessly blends a police procedural novel with elements of speculative fiction. DCS Kat Frank is sceptical when she is chosen to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE Lock on a missing persons case (AIDE being an Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity). The book asks the question whether, when the case becomes personal, the combination of Kat’s human instinct and the logic of Lock’s algorithms can prove to be a successful partnership.

All three novels ask pressing questions about the threat of technology. Adegoke’s encourages us to conceptualise a more nuanced manner of engagement in an often polarising digital world, while Oh’s perhaps warns about a technology which purports to connect people, but, in fact, compounds isolation, separation and historic inequality. Both Adegoke and Callaghan’s debuts explore contentious dilemmas in modern society (online toxicity in the former, and AI taking human jobs in the latter) with the distance of fiction enabling greater capacity for debate. Whereas the moral dilemma that Callaghan explores is AI taking over human jobs, my debut The Glass Woman considers AI taking over the human mind, and its impact on perception and identity.

In The Glass Woman, the protagonist Iris, a female neuroscientist, trials a pioneering AI brain implant and must fight to reconstruct her identity. It explores the nature of humanity amid technological advancement and uncertainty. It is a quest for Iris to discover who she is before it is too late. A cautionary tale, it posits AI as a manifestation of human desire for transcending our own limitations, and the peril that invokes. The novel asks: what will be lost if we allow technological progress at all costs?

At a time when the debate around AI has become so polarised, it is perhaps more vital than ever that writers and artists continue to engage with it through stories. The importance of storytellers using age-old methods to conceive possible worlds and outcomes, opening up the debate to everyone – not just the masters of technology – is now more pressing than ever.

What makes human writers unique is our identity – and what we want as readers is, arguably, authenticity – but AI creates an algorithmic echo chamber. What will be lost if we allow AI, and the bias inherent in machine learning, to replace human creativity? Perhaps what is at stake if we don’t engage in these conversations now is our identity – not just as individuals – but as a society, and it is our shared collective humanity which will ultimately suffer as a consequence.

The Glass Woman by Alice McIlroy

Black Mirror meets Before I Go to Sleep by way of Severance.

If you could delete all the hurt and pain from your life... would you? Even if you weren't sure what would be left?

Pioneering scientist Iris Henderson awakes in a hospital bed with no memories. She is told that she is the first test-subject for an experimental therapy, placing a piece of AI technology into her brain. She is also told that she volunteered for it. But without her memories, Iris doesn't know what the therapy is or why she would ever choose it.

Everyone warns her to leave it alone, but Iris doesn't know who to trust. As she scratches beneath the surface of her seemingly happy marriage and successful career, a catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, and secrets will be revealed that have the capacity to destroy her whole life.

 ......

Alice McIlroy’s writing has been longlisted for the Stylist Prize for Feminist Fiction and Grindstone International Novel Prize. Her debut novel, The Glass Woman, was published on 2nd January 2024 by Datura/Angry Robot Books. It can be ordered here.

She can be found on Twitter @alice_mcilroy and Instagram @alicemcilroy_author.

What Technology will Predict About Us in the Future - Felicia Yap

 

I predict that computers will soon know us better than we do ourselves. They will be able to predict our futures, how we will live – and perhaps even when we will die. More controversially, computers will also be able to predict a person’s likelihood of becoming a murderer (how this information will be used is an altogether different matter). 

I also predict that humanity will be divided into two kinds of people: people who will tell computers what to do, and people who will be told by computers what to do. A large proportion of the human population will fall in the second category, perhaps more than 85 percent. In the future, the digital divide will not be between the haves and have-nots. It will be about the control of technology: those who control or those who are controlled.

Here are my predictions of what computers will predict: 

Our Likelihood of Becoming Murderers

Law enforcement units are increasingly able to predict when and where crimes will occur. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon have developed CrimeScan, a crime-predicting software based on the premise that violent crimes tend to happen in geographic clusters and which takes into account day-of-the-week and seasonal trends. At least fourteen police forces in the United Kingdom have deployed software (such as PredPol) which identifies ‘hotspot’ areas where crimes are more likely to happen. Some forces are also involved in the National Data Analytics Solution project which combines machine-learning and information held by the police (such as conviction histories) to work out risk scores for individuals and predict their likelihood of committing crimes. 

The interesting question is who, not just when or where. Our data trails can already pinpoint our profiles with increasing accuracy. Cambridge University scientists have shown that Facebook Likes can ‘automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances [and] parental separation’. 

Will computers predict if we are likely to become murderers? My novel Future Perfect is partly about a secret service software named CriminalX that scans people’s backgrounds and data trails (such as their Google histories) to prevent future homicides and terrorist attacks. Research trends are already heading in this direction. Scientists at the University of Texas have shown that murderers are more likely to have lower IQ and had suffered greater exposure to violence, while researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found that convicted murderers are more likely to have offended at a young age. Researchers from Harrisburg University have apparently built software that can predict ‘if someone is a criminal based solely on a picture of their face’ with ‘80 percent accuracy and with no racial bias’, although their research have yet to be published by a reputable journal. In 2016, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University suggested that criminals have upper lip curvatures that are 23.4% larger than non-criminals and a slightly-narrower distance (5.6%) between the inner corners of their eyes, only to be refuted by researchers at Google (some of these projects have sparked public backlashes and much hand-wringing about the inherent biases of the algorithms used). 

How Our Days Will Unfold 

I predict that computers will be able to tell us how our days will look like, what we will be doing next. This is because humans are predictable creatures of habit. Computers will soon gather so much data about us (including our daily schedules and consumption preferences), they will be able to predict our short-term prospects with ease. In Future Perfect, an app called iPredict provides forecasts about what will happen to a person over the next two days – and a large swathe of humanity is, predictably, addicted to the app.

Our Health (and Our Likelihood of Dying)

I predict the widespread use of digital-phenotyping gadgets, such as mirrors that can read facial features, expressions and even emotions to infer a person’s health status. Researchers are already using the bounteous data on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to create algorithms that detect autism, HIV, obesity, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Our mobile phones, Fitbits and sleep-tracking rings will amass so many health metrics about us (such as steps taken, respiratory rates, body temperature and sleep quality), they will be able to predict our life expectancy, perhaps even our likelihood of dying on a particular day.

The computer scientist Alan Kay wrote that ‘the best way to predict the future is to invent it’. Yet some think the best way to predict the future is to prevent it. Having set down these predictions, I doubt whether some of these are truly desirable. After writing a book set in the future, I have realised that pre-cognition may not necessarily make a person happier. Will knowing when and how we are going to die improve our lives? The main problem with information is knowing what to do with it, to use it in a way that improves our physical and mental well-being. Knowledge can paralyse more than liberate. As the world hurtles inexorably in the direction of predictability (and as we get increasingly deluged by data and smothered by gadgetry), we may realise that unpredictability is what makes us human, what makes life worth living. In a world where computers will know us better than we do, the essence of our humanity may lie in not wanting to know. 

Future Perfect by Felicia Yap (Published by Headline Publishing Group) Out Now

What if today was your last day... A bomb has exploded during a fashion show, killing a beautiful model on the catwalk. The murderer is still at large... and he may strike again. Yet this is the least of Police Commissioner Christian Verger's worries. His fiancee Viola has left him. He has to keep his tumultuous past a secret. To make things worse, his voice assistant Alexa is 99.74% sure he will die tomorrow. Moving from snowy 1980s Montana to chic 1990s Manhattan to a drone-filled 2030s Britain, Future Perfect is an electrifying race to solve a murder before it's too late. Yet it is also a love story, a riveting portrait of a couple torn apart by secrets, grief and guilt. A twisted tale of how the past can haunt a person's future and be used to predict if he will die... or kill.

Crime Fiction - Exploring tomorrow’s politics, today. by Jem Tugwell

No Signal is the second book in the iMe series, and is set a year after Proximity introduced the world of iMe, where crime is eradicated and your health is managed through embedded technology.

No Signal’s crime thriller plot is extended with the politics, technology, religion and the environment of tomorrow.

Crime Fiction as a lens

It’s often stated that crime fiction is an effective lens through which to view contemporary society.

While it is true that crime fiction allows the author to put political issues and ideology into their characters’ lives, readers of the genre have an expectation that they will be entertained. In a plot-heavy crime story where the detective is racing against time, is it plausible that they are, for example, mulling over the claims and counter-claims around the environmental crisis? Or are they going to be worrying about who the killer is?

Inspiration

Technology, and especially emerging technology can provide vast possibilities for story lines. A writer can look at an existing technology and explore its impact on the book’s characters, or extrapolate into future technology and future worlds.

Any book’s era frames it and the technologies and politics have to match the period. Obviously, in an historical crime story there can be no wristwatch for your roman gladiator. Crime writers setting their stories in the contemporary world have to have plausible reasons for a mobile phone to be flat or left at home.

As with a crime thriller that puts too much emphasis on politics, a technology-based story has to get the balance right so that the reader understands the technology, but is entertained by the plot and not swamped by the detail.

The hacker and the evil corporation

Of course, hacking takes place, and it makes plotting easier to write a hacker character who can break into every system and do anything, but IT companies invest millions in firewalls and other defences. Even if your hacker can get in and make a change to some software code, companies have complex version control systems that let them see any changes that are made. They can rollback to a specific point in time or version, or restore an off-site backup for both code and data. Like the research and accuracy challenges that authors face with forensics or police procedure, technology and technology practices need thorough research to be plausible.

The evil corporation plot is very common, but I would argue that, even in a technology setting, a reader will relate to the issues more if the motives are personal. Getting two protagonists to argue about the pros and cons of a technological or political stance allows the underlying social impact to be drawn out but keep the story moving.

But doesn’t all that technology make it science fiction?

Yes, if the characters are zooming around in spaceships, but not if the main plot is a crime story and the technology is part of the ‘setting’. Not if the world is still recognisable as ‘today’ and the technology transitions are plausible.

A smart phone, Apple watch, or wearable fitness tracker would look like sci-fi to someone from the 1980s, and when you start researching for story ideas, it’s amazing what is already available today: robotic contact lenses that react to eye movement; the use of microprocessors in the control of some prosthetic knees; implantable devices that aim to be personal blood labs.

Try typing ‘body augmentation technology’ into a search engine and prepare to be inspired.

Exploring tomorrow’s politics, today.

Any technology that is used has a social and political impact. Just look at how smart phones have changed the dynamics of groups in a restaurant. How much communication is between the people physically there, and how much time is devoted to screen time and communicating with virtual friends?

In May 2019 there was a legal challenge against the Welsh police’s use of facial recognition software where it was argued that facial recognition ‘makes a mockery of our right to privacy’. In our Covid-19 world, how many would sacrifice the right to privacy if it was used to track the infected and help the health service control the virus?

When the author pushes technology into a different use or timescale, a new set of future political issues can be explored.

Only as technologies evolve and are fully embedded will we see their true political and social impact. Until then it’s left to fiction, like No Signal and the world of iMe, to imagine what might be and explore our future today.

No Signal by Jem Tugwell (Serpentine Books)
Can a game change the world? The Ten are chosen - they are reckless, driven and strong.  They are tested. Ten become Four. In a country where everyone is tracked, how can the Four hide from the police? DI Clive Lussac hates the system that controls everything, but he's ill and it's helping him.  He must decide; conform or fight. As Clive's world unravels, he and his partners DC Ava Miller and DS Zoe Jordan can't believe the entry  price to the game. They strive to answer the real questions. Why does the ultimate Augmented Reality game has four different finishes? And how is a simple game wrapped up in politics, religion and the environment?

Call for Papers: Murder, She Tweeted: Crime Narratives and the Digital Age

Murder, She Tweeted: Crime Narratives and the Digital Age

August 23-24, 2018

University of Tampere, Finland

Keynote speakers: Andrew Pepper (Queen's University Belfast) & Fiona Peters (Bath Spa University) First Call for Papers

The advent of new technologies and digital media have transformed society and influenced cultural narratives. The changes brought about by technological innovations, digitalisation, and globalisation have affected not only the subject matter and themes of contemporary crime narratives but also the production, distribution, and consumption of crime fiction on the global market, as well as the analytical tools, techniques, research methods, and theories available to scholars. 

These changes are readily visible in detectives' digital investigations or in how criminals employ digital technology in committing cybercrimes such as online stalking or theft. Moreover, the potential of digitalisation in modifying crime narratives nowadays ranges from podcasts such as "Serial" to Sherlock Holmes fan fiction to transmedia narration in "Sherlock" and the Twitter adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library.

We invite proposals for paper presentations on crime narratives and the digital age from different language and cultural spheres. The conference's approach to crime and the digital context is wide and covers a variety of contemporary crime narratives (e.g. novels, films, TV series, adaptations, true crime, fan fiction, vlogs, blogs and other social media) that can be examined in a number of ways.

We would like to welcome proposals which address one or several of the following topics (please note that the list is by no means exhaustive):

- production and the global market of crime narratives

- crime narratives, participatory production and fan practices

- new modes of narration and serialised storytelling in crime narratives

- multimodality and transmedia crime narratives

- remakes and social media adaptations of crime narratives

- social media and mobile technologies in or about crime narratives

- crimes and criminal agency

- criminal networks and transnational crime

- crime and thriller narratives and digital geopolitics

- policing, detective agency and (digital) methods of detection

- true crime narratives and cold case archives

- digital humanities and the study of crime narratives

- crime and digital culture in the postcolonial world

- virtual crime

- ecology, crime and digital technologies

Participants may contribute with individual presentations (20 min) or panel proposals (three presenters).

Please submit your proposal (max 300 words for individual presentations; for panels, please submit titles and abstracts of each paper) and a short biographical statement (including name, email address, institutional affiliation) to t.helen.mantymaki@jyu.fi and maarit.piipponen@uta.fi as attachments in rtf or doc format by March 20, 2018.

Conference fee: there is a conference fee of 70 euros (coffee, lunches, reception) and participants are expected to cover all costs for travel, accommodation, and subsistence themselves.

Organising committee:

Dr Helen Mäntymäki, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Dr Maarit Piipponen, University of Tampere, Finland.

Dr Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Dr Andrea Hynynen, University of Turku Finland​