Mexposing society to the fait accompli of breakthrough innovations is characteristic of the modus operandi of technology leaders. Generative artificial intelligence isn’t the only technology to be controversial. Another innovation that will revolutionize our lives is “ubiquitous” computing, that is to say the analysis in real time of our behavior from sensors implanted in our environment, and the proposal (or the orientation) of our activities by algorithms from this analysis.
So-called “smart” buildings will provide the scope of this technology. The Environment Protection Agency estimates that Americans spend, on average, 90% of their lives inside buildings. The massive arrival of embedded technologies in the built space therefore concerns almost all of our lives, which, reasonably, would justify asking ourselves ethical questions before armies of sensors invade the buildings.
In an article from April 3there MIT Technology Review reports that a group of researchers from the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, thought they could overcome these questions by equipping their campus with high-performance sensors. This was without taking into account the indignant reaction of a large number of their colleagues, who saw in these sensors suddenly appearing on the walls of all public and private spaces on campus an intolerable invasion of their privacy. This sparked a pitched battle between computer experts at Carnegie Mellon.
Without the necessary hindsight, the danger is of no longer being able to differentiate between innovation and progress. Considering that every technological advance is necessarily progress for humanity amounts to avoiding any serious debate on the societal impacts of technological innovations. The latter are barely addressed to the general public, yet future mass consumers of innovations brought by technology companies responding to a logic of seeking competitive advantage.
Assumed pragmatism
For these companies, it is above all a question of being the first to launch innovative products and services on the market in order to maximize their profits. The race towards innovation is accompanied by an inevitable loss of control of human beings overwhelmed by the extreme complexity of devices operating like black boxes, potentially harmful to them. There is therefore a clear need for a temporization that would give society an upstream space to think and establish a consensus by law.
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