Day: November 12, 2022

This particular instance of technology pain was caused by an aspiring young film maker. He and a couple of friends were up on the street in front of my house.

They were just trying to get a 1 minute video made to be used as part of his application to film school.

The surveillance camera in front of the house was going nuts because it kept seeing humans and movement.

My phone was dinging every few seconds.

They were using a large round diffuser to soften the sunlight and the surveillance camera was seeing the movement of the diffuser, then re-alerting, then the camera was focusing on the humans in the frame and alerting again.

Software is very cool for routine things, but the software in the camera wasn’t quite sure what to make of this situation.

Eventually, the dog heard voices as the filmmaker moved away from his subject and was calling direction from further up the street.

I’d been watching the live feed and had a pretty good idea that they were filming, and the camera was always pointed in the models direction. Once the dog heard unfamiliar voices he demanded to go outside to check it out.

Thankfully, The dog didn’t start barking, these people were on the road and not our property so he just howled softly to let me know he saw something odd.

At this point the filmmaker turned the camera to the dog who was watching from the side gate.

The other half stepped out onto the porch and asked if there was something these folks needed.

The filmmaker asked if he could take a couple of shots of the dog who is photogenic (and he knows he is), explanations were given and permission was granted.

It was one of those times I wished I could converse with the surveillance camera and tell it everything was fine. Unfortunately there’s no way to have that kind of in-depth conversation with the device.

On the one hand I’d like a super intelligent AI like Jarvis in Ironman, or Cortana from the Halo franchise. On the other hand, I’m concerned that a super intelligent AI like that would decide in a couple of milliseconds, that humanity was a lost cause and take appropriate action based on that decision. Skynet from The Terminator springs to mind.

I guess I fall into the Steven Hawking camp. He was apparently concerned that AI’s could or would become dangerous. Even Asimov’s three laws might not protect humanity.