Anicet Mbida 6:55 am, December 6, 2021
Every day, Anicet Mbida makes us discover an innovation that could well change the way we consume.
This Monday, he is interested in a smart box called Themis which distributes fines for each swear word uttered.
In some families, there is a swear box where you put a coin every time someone makes a language gap. An electronic version doped with artificial intelligence will arrive.
Once again, reality catches up with fiction.
I don't know if you remember the movie "Demolition Man" with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes?
It came out in 1993, and he had a fairly accurate vision of the world we live in today: connected speakers, advertising everywhere, and above all, “Cancel culture” and political correctness.
It's a box hung on the wall, it listens to conversations with artificial intelligence algorithms, and distributes fines to those who say bad words.
Now this box exists.
He is called Themis from the name of the Greek goddess of justice.
And it is starting to be tested in schools and universities for racial slurs, arguments, mockery or harassment.
What happens when he hears an insult?
Does it give an hour of glue automatically?
No, because he is not yet able to identify the person speaking.
So he just sounds an alarm and says out loud “Watch out, this is not good!
This is no way to talk to your classmates… ”or other pre-recorded messages.
The idea is to do "name and shame" as they say.
That is to say, to point the finger at the person to make them uncomfortable publicly, and thus return the aggression.
The system still needs to understand us.
Our personal assistants already have a hard time speaking normally, then during an argument.
This is the limit and, at the same time, the mirage of artificial intelligence.
That's why we draw so much inspiration from science fiction.
But we must remember that in these films, the machines go out of order or end up turning against us.
What is much more worrying ...