The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is letting the internet control a human being and I’m wondering if they’ve stopped to consider whether this is a good idea.
[jwplayer KlaiocWU]
MIT Lab researchers created a program which will essentially allow folks on the web to tune in and see and hear exactly what the person, a hired actor, being controlled does. The lab has labelled the project, which is called BeeMe, as a web-based social experiment.
If you’re keen to take part in the event, you can log in to the BeeMe website at 2:00 PM AEDT on the 1st of November (given we’re a day ahead of the US) where you’ll be able to suggest and vote on what the actor should do next. You can get an idea of how it’ll work in the short clip below.
Trick or treat? pic.twitter.com/1Dr2Z0JGis
— Nic Pescetelli (@beeme_bee) October 15, 2018
The whole thing is going to be monitored, so nothing that will endanger the well-being, privacy, or dignity of the actor will be permitted. In other words, your requests for the actor to fang a nudie run down the main strip will be swiftly deleted by those running the project.
Regardless, it’s still pretty wild for someone to give up their entire being to the internet, or as I like to call it, humanity’s heaping trash fire.
On the night of Halloween, the most scary thing will be giving up your free will, your agency, your persona. The absence of oneself is pure absolute terror. #absencetrilogy
— Nic Pescetelli (@beeme_bee) October 18, 2018
The idea was partly inspired by the Black Mirror episode, White Christmas, in which a dating guru (played by Jon Hamm) gives advice to a man by watching him through an implanted chip in his head.
In this case, the narrative MIT Lab has come up with is that the human being controlled has given up his free will to a group of humans to fight an evil AI called Zookd, which has been accidentally released online.
Obvious profanity aside, you can always leave it up to the internet to ruin participation events like this one way or another, so it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. I mean, we can’t even name something without it echoing the fabled Boaty McBoatface for god’s sake.
Good luck to the actor.
