34C3 - Humans as software extensions

34C3 preroll music

Herald: And yeah, please give
a warm welcome to Sebastian!

applause

Sebastian: Hi, and thank you for the
introduction. Thank you all so much for

having me. So, what am I gonna
talk about tonight? I will

of course, being an artist, talk a bit
about some art projects but mostly

I will speak about the research I do
as part of my practice, specifically

about humans as software extensions.
And towards the end I will

share some thoughts on why being a human
software extension could actually be

something maybe not positive but brings
some new possibilities. So I will try to

end the talk on a positive note. In 2008,
the science fiction movie "Sleep Dealer"

speculated about a future which couldn't
be more timely. The border between Mexico

and the US has been closed. Therefore,
immigrant workers in the US have been

replaced by robots. However, the robots
are remotely controlled by people in

Mexico who have their bodies plugged
directly into the network. Then, 2 years

later, in 2010, the CEO of CrowdFlower,
which is a crowdsourcing and cloud work

platform, Lukas Biewald speaks of a
similar situation: "Before the Internet,

it would be really difficult to find
someone, sit them down for 10 minutes and

get them to work for you, and then fire
them after those 10 minutes. But with

technology, you can actually find them,
pay them the tiny amount of money, and

then get rid of them when you don't need
them anymore." Biewald's remarks, however,

are not Science Fiction. Instead, they
describe a contemporary condition. So,

humans as software extensions: What is
this condition? I would summarize it as

people extending computational systems by
offering their bodies, their senses and

their cognition. And specifically bodies
and minds that can be easily plugged in

and later easily be discarded, so bodies
and minds algorithmically managed and

under the permanent pressure of constant
availability efficiency and perpetual self

optimization. So, as such, humans as
software extensions are both, the

foundation and the result, of a mega
structure which Benjamin Breton calls "The

Stack". It's a computational totality of
planetary scale so somehow we can imagine

it as a planetary scale computer
consisting of a stack of layers from rare

earth minerals to data centers to bots and
people which in this model are exactly the

same. So, in this computational totality,
even the smallest nodes can be addressed

and can be programmed. What The Stack also
describes is a new geography so Google

Maps defining borders or, as just seen in
Sleep Dealer, the US building a wall while

still being able to plug right into the
bodies of Mexican workers. But to be

clear, from my point of view, the model of
planetary scale computation as a totality

is as much a reality as it is also a
gigantic fantasy and ideology of power,

optimization and efficiency. So this is
the state of self-driving cars right now,

at least from the perspective of a Ford.
So I would now like to give some examples

about what I mean by humans as software
extensions and what effects these, like,

this way of managing digital labor has. 3
years ago, I worked on a piece in which I

explored digital colonialism and, among
other things, I explored Google's and

Facebook's attempts to integrate into
their services those 2/3 of the world

population who are not online, yet. As you
all know, Google wants to use balloons,

Facebook wants to use drones and they want
them to circle above these areas that do

not have any internet connection basically
sucking that which is below up into the

network. So the piece of which you see a
little bit here is called "How to Appear

Offline Forever" and it consists of a mix
of found material like videos, images, and

questions and there's also a layer of
stories written by people from Silicon

Valley, Sri Lanka and Zambia which are all
locations of importance to this piece. And

so in order to get in contact with people
in Sri Lanka, I ended up using the

outsourcing platform Upwork which offers a
highly efficient interface for hiring

freelancers from all around the world. On
that platform, you can sort freelancers by

price, skills, rating and then you can
pick whoever you think fits the job best.

And their user experience of hire and fire
is well crafted. So it's software

extensions that can be plugged in and
removed again easily. It doesn't matter

where they are, who they are as long as
they get it done. So once the freelancers

in Sri Lanka got to work I noticed that it
was not only able but also encouraged to

spy on them. Upwork records every
keystroke and regularly takes screenshots

while freelancers work, building a growing
diary of their activity. So I found myself

in a situation in which I wasn't only
being surveilled by corporations or

states, I was also doing the same myself,
managing my extensions spying on them in

order to monitor their performance. So
this is not them, like corporations or

states, spying on us, us protecting
ourselves against them through encryption.

This is all of us fighting for our place
in the network trying to be valuable

nodes. So this is me and one of the
freelancers which is a very lovely lady I

got to meet in Sri Lanka later. So if you
look at this historically and if you go

back just 15, maybe 20 years, outsourcing
via the internet was a practice that could

only be employed by big IT companies,
mostly from the US, India. Today it is

cheap and easy and it can be done by
anybody. A new service by Amazon called

Amazon Key illustrates this rather new
situation perfectly. With Amazon Key, you

can remotely grant access to an apartment
while you're not at home using the Amazon

Key camera, lock and app, you can spy on
the otherwise completely invisible workers

from your smartphone. So this is the lock
remotely unlocked. So here outsourcing

doesn't generate free time. Instead, it is
born out of necessity. It is marketed as

making possible the transformation and a
liberation from being managed to also

being able to manage others and, in this
case, you're able to deal with them like

without ever having to meet them in
person. So now everybody, not only can but

has to, and actually, of course, wants to,
we all want to use people as software

extensions and with that comes also that
we have to remotely track and rate their

performance. So let's recap: Factory
workers are extending machines with their

bodies. Freelancers have escaped the
factory but have to offer themselves as

flexible extensions to the modern media
assembly line, for example like which I

saw on Upwork. So now micro-entrepreneurs
have to invent their own shops, offering

their creativity in the form of little
packages that are called gigs. You can buy

such gigs at a fixed price on platforms
like Fiverr. For those who do not know

Fiverr: Initially each each gig on Fiverr
was priced at exactly $5 of which the

platform kept $1. So some months ago, I
found a way to directly access all videos

uploaded to the platform in real time,
including every single video that people

on Fiverr are producing for their clients.
So through this crack in the surface, or

you could also call it a security problem
or a privacy issue they have, I could look

at the leaked stream of videos and I did
this for days and weeks and months and I

downloaded videos worth of like more than
100 GB and I was looking for some patterns

to understand this marketplace. So to give
you some ideas about what I saw there: On

the platform it is dog-eat-dog. Be the
best the cheapest, the most creative, the

most efficient, be just like a proper
software extension. Never sleep, work all

the time. At the same time, everybody is
also fighting against the platform's

algorithms and clean interfaces that hide
most gig workers on page 2, 3, 4 and so

on. As many gigs offer unrealistically
short delivery times for creative work, it

becomes clear that they themselves use
bots, generators and templates, simulating

creative work and creating yet another
layer of man-machine complexity. So using

automation in order to not be replaced by
automation. Their biggest selling point

seems to be their low cost coupled with a
truly natural interface: a human being. In

contrast, there is another group of people
consciously offering their bodies often as

carriers of messages like screens. So
here, the fantasy of the universal

addressability and availability of all
nodes manifests itself in the distant and

often exotic body that acts as a screen.
This goes hand in hand with gigs offering

personal porn or erotic videos and fetish
videos. So here, I would summarize: Being

a software extension on a hyper-
competitive platform fosters and demands

something that I would call survival
creativity, that means coming up with

whatever it takes to survive in a
competitive environment. And as I

reminder, Fiverr might be an extreme
example but it exemplifies a development

that has become a reality for many already
and it's not like it's them and us, we are

all human software extensions. So far I've
managed to talk about software without

mentioning artificial intelligence even
once, that's nice I think. Instead I've

drawn this a bleak picture of a quasi
totality of work and exploitation.

However, automation and artificial
intelligence supposedly imply a future

without work, right? So in the previous
examples, platforms, software, artificial

intelligence acted as scientific
management. The Taylorist boss

algorithmically distributing and
modulating human workers as software

extensions. Now, one great post work ideas
is to not only automate the management of

working bodies and minds, but instead to
completely replace all human nodes with AI

as well. While I think this is an
excellent foundation for discussing our

society's obsession with work, I would
also argue this hypothesis is as appealing

as it is flawed, unfortunately. So my
observation is this: AI, artificial

intelligence, is an appropriation and a
possible extrapolation of existing

knowledge and skills, yes. And as such it
might as well do our jobs but it is first

and foremost used as a scheme to fragment
work into tasks that can be done anywhere

24/7 and to make this labor invisible.
What we see here is a piece called

"Segmentation Network" which I made last
year it plays back over 600,000

segmentations manually created by
mechanical crowd workers, Mechanical Turk

crowd workers, for Microsoft's cocoa image
recognition data set. These so-called

segmentations are based on photos we have
uploaded to Flickr and they are used in

machine learning, training AI what it can
see and what not. So you can automate as

much as you want but at some point you
will have to train and especially maintain

the machines and the software. So I would
say AI creates yet another layer of badly

or unpaid care and maintenance work which
is often invisible on purpose. So I would

say this needs to change. And I think
Feminist theory and practices have to lot

have a lot to say about this issue but
that's another talk and I would like to

hear it. So here is a point in case and
maybe a solution: At the end of 2011,

while still being students and sharing a
studio Silvia Larusso, a friend and

artist, and me we started to take a
screenshot of every single captcha that we

had to solve while navigating the web. So
over the years, proving that we are human

time and time again, we captured hundreds
of captchas. This year, we thought about

how to make this little thing or these
like little things, the collection of

these things, into something which is as
valuable and as expensive as possible and

so we published the complete collection as
a series of five handmade Leporello books.

So each of these books is one year. And if
you if you expand all these Leporello,

they have a total length of 90 meters
chronicling five years of micro labor as

well as the history of captures. So if you
look at it, captures started as a

technique to merely prevent spam and then
they kind of morphed into a method for

deciphering house numbers and transcribing
books. And then lately it's become a means

of teaching image recognition to AI
software. While we were collecting these

captures, Gabriela Rojas Lozano in 2015
filed a class action lawsuit against

Google and she claimed that Google
operates a highly profitable transcription

business built upon free labor which it
deceptively and unfairly obtains from

unwitting website users. Unfortunately,
her claims were rejected. So here the

judge states that it's like you spent only
a few seconds on this it cannot be

expected to pay for such a small job. So,
however, her attempt to sue Google was

still a success I would say because it led
to the proof that Google has perfected a

magical process in which work is
transformed into literally nothing. So

welcome post-work society! How does this
magical trick work? It's rather simple.

You take a job, let's say transcribing
books, and you fragment it and you

fragment it more and more and more until
suddenly the job is magically done without

anyone having ever worked on it. Because,
if nobody has to get paid, nobody had to

work either, right? Hence, the judge's
statement is proof that this magic

actually works. It gets better. In the end
Google still ends up being paid even

though they have just made the job
disappear magically. So what I want to

suggest now is to seize the means of
magic. What about this: Fragmenting those

platforms that algorithmically manage us
to such a great degree they simply do not

exist anymore? Magically, their job will
still be done and in the end we get the

money. I guess in like a less magical
version we could call this platform co-

operativism. If you do not believe in
magic then I have two more suggestions

about what we, as a software extensions,
can do. So I will show you two clips from

my latest video piece which is called "I
Will Say Whatever You Want in Front of a

Pizza". You can see the full version
online on this website, all that's gonna

be, I think there's going to be a
screening somewhere here in the in the

video lounge. Anyway, I will show you two
bits even though it's a 12-minute video

and just looking at two bits doesn't make
too much sense still I think they show a

point I wanted to make pretty nicely. So
the video is narrated from the perspective

of a cloud worker and this is the
protagonist:

Protagonist: [unintelligeable speech from
video] Instead, I was working for a pizza

delivery company. Brian, your next
automated pizza delivery is scheduled for

Saturday February the 25th at 12:00 p.m..
To confirm, text yes. To decline, text no.

Text help for help.
Other voice: Thank you, Papa John, you

handsomeman. I shall call
you the Carbs Vixen.

Protagonist: We're sorry, we didn't
understand. Please confirm or decline.

Other voice: When I make love I imagine
you tossing some dough shirtless

Protagonist: Dude, our automated system
isn't set up yet. This is a real person

texting you. I make minimum wage, please
just tell me if you want the pizza

S: So, that's a protagonist. To give you
some background: In 2016, Donald Trump's

team hired a Singaporean teenager through
Fiverr which is the platform I talked

about before, and they hired her to
convert a PowerPoint into a Prezi which is

the software I'm using for the video,
basically outsourcing the Make America

Great Again campaign, which is it's a true
story. laughter in background So at some

point in the video, the protagonist who is
now working and only as a pizza delivery

bot but also as a cloud work on Amazon's
Mechanical Turk platform, preparing data

sets for AI, at some point he gets to know
the Singaporean teenager as a fellow

worker. And she has got an idea.
Protagonist: One day, I found a thread

started by her. She talked about the
political implications of what we did and

what kind of things we could do. Of
course, we on Mechanical Turk had created

the data set. It was sad to see how
depressed many of us actually were.

Other voice: Researchers asked 500 workers
to complete a survey which contained a

standard clinical depression survey. 170
workers agreed to share their Instagram

post for the study. Out of those 170
workers, 70 were clinically depressed. By

the way, the depression filter is Inkwell.
It turns photos to black and white and

adds high contrast. Better not to use it.
Protagonist: But she pointed to something

else. It was in our power to manipulate or
even to change the very core of such

mechanisms: our data sets, machines,
society, you, the future. We started to

discuss, to organize and to experiment. Of
course, we didn't always agree. Was this

just for fun, like Easter eggs? Did we
share a political agenda? In any case,

things had to happen secretly. Otherwise,
it wouldn't work. Teaching Google to

identify a photo of an eggplant as British
singer Chris Meloni served as a proof of

concept.
S: Okay, so the ideas is this: When we are

extending software with our bodies and
minds, we are also extending our reach

into the software, and reaching into the
software, being part of the software, we

can start to manipulate these systems that
govern us and that we have to use to

govern others. And once we are plugged, in
we can manipulate data, we can create new

and weird and slow and inefficient
software from within. So it can be fun,

like leaving easter eggs for others to
find realizing yes, there are actual

people inside these systems. Which brings
me to my third and last thought: Why being

a software extension also has some chances
or possibilities. I will end the talk by

talking about Mark Zuckerberg which will
make me look like a fool anyway. Being a

software extension can also offer a new
aesthetic and a new way of being and I

think this video which could be called the
father of all stupid demos illustrates

this in a rather interesting way. Here,
for whatever reason Zuckerberg is

demonstrating Facebook's virtual reality
by visiting Puerto Rico in the wake of

Hurricane Maria. So why do I show this
video? Contrary to what he had intended,

Zuckerberg as a crudely abstracted version
of himself turned into a software

extension, detaches and dissociates
himself from the real world. This is what

I like. Because I think and you will agree
with me: Software is not perfect. It's

full of bugs, it often behaves in
unexpected and weird and glitchy ways,

doing stupid things often and like often
over and over again, in an infinite loop.

Therefore, embracing the weird and
abstract asthetic of a of a human as a

software extension could actually allow us
to detach ourselves from circumstances and

which we are required to be our best
working selves all the time. So being like

available all the time, addressable,
programmable, to update ourselves all the

time. We could like use being a software
extension, the aesthetic of being a

software extension, as a mask behind which
we can hide, pretending to be a bot.

That's the idea. Thank you.

applause

Herald: Thank you, Sebastian, indeed, for
making a bleak future look a little bit

more bright. I think we have about five
minutes for very short Q&A, otherwise, he

said you have a Twitter account and you
can also meet Sebastian next to the stage.

So are there questions, maybe from the
Signal Angel? None? Okay, then just

another round of applause for Sebastian!
Sebastian: Thank you.

applause

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subtitles created by c3subtitles.de
in the year 2018