Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Fiona Enright

G(l)ory/Techno-Hubris

"Phones such as the Apple IPhone XS, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ offer, “face unlock,” which provides a user access to their phone using facial recognition algorithms, and deny it to those other than the user, in place of a numerical or pattern-based unlocking code. Handwriting analysis is used by banks to verify signatures on checks that have been deposited through an ATM, and speech recognition is offered as an information-seeking aid in the form of digital assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. The abovementioned concepts undoubtedly evoke ideas relating to artificial intelligence (AI) – an area of study which has been popularly perceived through the lens of sci-fi media – conjures images of humanoid robots capable of walking, talking, and perhaps even feeling and thinking independently of a human agent – a common figure in franchises like Star Trek or Star Wars. These culturally-influenced biases detract from the ideas and issues regarding the present, and often covert, algorithms that our computer programs, phone applications, social media websites, etc. are comprised of." Fiona Enright 'Section II’ The Human Element: Information, Knowledge and Art in the Digital Episteme, 2021