Should We Be Letting Machines See for Us?

Anyone who has seen James Cameron’s 1984 film The Terminator remembers “seeing” through the eyes of the killer android sent into the past as it scans its surroundings for clothes, weapons, and, eventually, its target. Beneath the fleshly form of the future “Governator” resided a robot skeleton sent from the future to eliminate the main human foe of the machines’ plan to rule the future. German filmmaker Harun Farocki would later call those pictures “operational images”—the machine-made and machine-used pictures of the world that threatened to supplant not just how people see, but people period. In the November 2014 issue of the journal e-flux, Trevor Paglen revisits Farocki’s now-decade-old work and updates it for today. Paglen raises interesting questions about the very nature of how machines see as well as whether we should be letting machines—from license plate readers at intersections to drones in combat zones—see for us. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Should We Be Letting Machines See for Us?"