*** Special Feature - May 2016 ***
Stephen,
looking at your work you seem to have a fascination with algorithms. Why is that?
I
try to write in a way that makes tomorrow's questions about the effect of
technology on our society as easy to get to grips with as possible.
Advances
in artificial intelligence raise all sorts of questions and algorithms are one
of the easiest ways of thinking about what AI might mean for our future. If you think of an algorithm as a set of
actions based on a set of decisions then they are everywhere. For example,
every time you buy a train ticket and are asked if you want a return, standard
class etc. you’re interacting with an algorithm that's deciding your options
based on the choices you've already made.
Once
upon a time I was computer programmer so this is a familiar concept and I know
how difficult it is to get right. If you don’t believe me try writing a set of
fool proof instructions for making a cup of tea, taking into account all the
possible preferences. It’s hard, so I'm amazed and a little concerned at the
amount of trust we place in the algorithms that affect our lives. That's not to
say I think using algorithms is a bad thing – quite the opposite – after all
they’ve been around since at least ancient Greece. But, we should all
understand the basics a lot better than we do, otherwise apart from anything
else we’ll never know if it’s possible to get a robot to make a decent cup of
tea.
So
how do you go about understanding the basics?
Society
tends to change a lot slower than technology so thinking and writing about the
near-future is my way of approaching it.
I
look at the emerging technology and place it in today’s context so I can
imagine how it might affect us. A hot topic at the moment is driver-less cars.
The technology is one thing, but it's only when you start thinking about the
sorts of ethical questions it raises that you get a sense of the complexity for
the algorithms of the future.
For
example, would a car be programmed by the manufacturer to prioritise passengers
or pedestrians in a situation where it had to kill one or the other? With human
drivers we tend to debate who was negligent or made the wrong choice after the
event. However, with a driver-less car the decision is made at the point of
manufacture – a sort of algorithmic pre-meditated murder.
This
is difficult stuff and I was chuffed when a school in London used one of my
pieces of flash fiction – The Driverless
Car’s Dilemma – as a prompt for debate.
Your latest novel Fluence paints
a dark future of social media algorithms. Where did these ideas come from?
As
you say, one of the central themes of Fluence
is the algorithm that calculates your social media influence rating and
hence your job, where you live and to an extent your friends.
On
the surface the thinking behind the Fluence algorithm is fairly obvious
to anyone who takes part in any social media activity – we are slaves to
‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘re-tweets’.
However,
if you pause and think about how little we know about the decisions the search
algorithms and social media feeds are making when they choose what to show us,
and more importantly what not to show us, it gets scary.
We're
familiar with manipulation by the media giants, but often we trust the
algorithm-driven information providers such as Google, Facebook and Instagram
implicitly.
When
I was writing Fluence, I was surprised by how many people, young and
old, hadn't considered that someone somewhere had made deliberate coding
choices about how they wanted you to view the world.
So
who’s to blame and what do we need to do to resist?
There’s
a huge debate still to be had about who is accountable for the decisions of
algorithms – is it the coder, the company that sold the product, the owner of
the product or the algorithm itself.
As
a society I don't think we're equipped with sufficient knowledge and language
to have those debates and yet the decisions are already being made.
Typically,
legislation is slow at keeping up with technology so we can’t rely on that -
it's up to us, all of us, to wise up and start asking the right questions. Some
would say you need to get down and dirty deep inside the tech to understand it
and others would say that you need to get your face out of your phone and look
around you. Maybe it’s a combination of both or maybe it’s as simple as reading
good fiction that makes you think – but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Are
you saying that algorithms should be held responsible for their actions?
Yes,
in a way. Algorithms are getting more and more sophisticated and can even
rewrite themselves in a way that the original coder no longer knows what the
algorithm is trying to achieve. Of course, the constraints built in to the
original algorithm will determine the extent to which it veers away from the
coder’s original intention.
We
have to ask; at what point does the algorithm become intelligent enough to be
responsible. And when it becomes responsible for its actions what punishment is
appropriate or effective enough to stop it happening again.
On
my website you'll find flash fiction that touches on this, such as an algorithm
that imprisons it's owner for not upgrading it, an algorithm that crashed and
now can't remember its owner's medical needs and an algorithm that decides who
can have children. There’s also a stand-alone short story based in the world of
Fluence called The Secret of the Algorithm.
This
seems quite doom-laden. Where does it leave us in your view?
I'm
really positive about the future even though I might sound like a grumpy
so-and-so.
Technology
has the power to globally democratise and equalise if it's harnessed by the
right people for the right reasons. And, I guess that's my warning bell... the
people with the money and the power won't give it up easily – you wouldn't
expect them to. But, with any technical revolution there's an opportunity to ask the right questions and make the right decisions to transform the society we've inherited.
As citizens we have the right to be involved in shaping our future and as consumers we have the responsibility to make the right choices. I guess what I'm saying, and I'm sure you've heard many people say it already, technology is neutral. However, the way it's used isn't.
So let's get clued up and avoid being manipulated or sleepwalking into our future.
Or if that's not possible, let's create an algorithm that works out how to have the most fun with the least pain!
About the Book:
It’s the week before the annual Pay Day when strata positions are decided by the controlling corporations. The social media feed is frenetic with people trying to boost their influence rating while those above the strata and those who’ve opted out pursue their own manipulative goals.
Amber is ambitious. Martin is burnt out by years of struggling. She cheats to get what she wants while he barely clings on to what he has.
Set in a speculative near-future London, Fluence is a satirical story of aspiration and desperation and of power seen and unseen. It’s a story of control and consequence. It’s the story of the extremes to which Amber and Martin are prepared to go in these last ten thousand minutes before Pay Day.
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I was a teenager in a small market town in the UK when punk hit the scene and its ethos and energy rushed through me and my generation. It felt as if we could stick two fingers up to the establishment and do whatever we wanted, however we wanted to do it. I’m sure that’s a familiar feeling for every generation of teenagers, but there’s no denying that punk provoked a reaction. It was also the era of free festivals and the peace convoy; to a teenager at a time when nuclear war threatened to end the world at any moment the free festivals like Stonehenge seemed truly post-apocalyptic. I loved them. The mix of hippies, hells angels and punks all co-existing (fairly) peacefully without the police was an incredibly formative experience. I’ve been to festivals every year since and still find them a great way to re-calibrate normal.
Being a squatter and being in a cult were both out there experiences but not as dissimilar as they might seem at first glance; they both had a strong ideological desire for non-conformity and strong, albeit different, moral codes. That’s the sort of realisation that makes me want to wobble the world to see what falls out.
I’ve had some fun on the journey from that punk inspired teenager to this anarchy inspired bureaucrat and more often than not I’ve had a foot in more than one camp at a time: as an unwelcome hippie at punk gigs; a religious cult member in the hedonistic squatter scene; or a would-be anarchist working as a bureaucrat. Even where I live in Fitzrovia we see ourselves as a village in the heart of London, as an enclave of difference standing out against the corporate onslaught of blandness (but close enough in case we need it).
That’s only a small insight into the inspirations and experiences that helped form me, Stephen Oram the author. And, if I’m asked why I write I have more than one answer; it’s a mixture of wanting to create something entertaining, thinking I’ve got something to say and needing something to keep me out of mischief. One thing is for sure though, I’d love to set off some small firecrackers of thought to light the world slightly differently inside your head!
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Giveaway
2 digital Copies of Fluence by Stephen Oram
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