PIXEL PROPHET
PIXEL PROPHET
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!
Later this year, we shall see the official introduction of self-drive cars on our roads — initially for “evaluation” purposes, but, as Martin Christie suggests, there is no doubt that this trend is comings whether we are asking for it or not.
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t’s all about taking control from fallible human beings and putting faith in intelligent machines. The logic is very simple — most accidents are caused by human error therefore removing the human element should make the roads safer, and perhaps as part of the pressure to push them forward, make traffic flow more smoothly on increasingly congested roads. However, those promoting this technology seem to have more faith in it than those who work with intelligent machines on a daily basis — like us. And you have to ask, in a working environment increasingly at the mercy of technical foibles and failures, whether extending this prospect to the transport system is entirely wise. When that development also puts lives at risk rather than just mere inconvenience, it is surely worth more detailed investigation. Regular readers will know I often start with an apparently unconnected rant about some topical subject on the basis that we do not work in a bubble and that anything that affects the outside world can in some way affect us, especially when it involves the condition of machine learning which has been a more direct example in our own working space. Some years ago, I took a dig at earlier attempts at teaching cars to think for themselves, with companies like Google finding they struggled to cope with the complicated calculations of entering a roundabout or any unpredictable event. Machine learning is all about predictability — which is why your computer keeps offering you things you liked before. But human beings are by their very nature unpredictable; that’s how we learnt and evolved — from banging rocks together to make fire to building space rockets. So I accept that Artificial Intelligence has progressed dramatically since then, as it is used to some extent in almost every device we use daily. But there is a big difference between applying it to your shopping selection and putting your life — or those of others — in its hands. Surely common sense would predict that self-driving cars could only work if all vehicles were driven by the same logic and that mixing them 14
with erratic individual behaviour is a recipe for disaster. And I don’t just mean other cars. For example, the rush to promote two wheels in city centres now has cyclists who conform to no highway code rules or any sense of orderly direction, and much worse electric scooters with untrained and inexperienced riders often doing speeds faster than regular traffic. Even as a pedestrian, I now have to use all my extended senses to walk safely to work across town, with potential hazards likely to assault me from any direction, and this must be a similar experience across the country. It would seem that the best advice for survival is that offered by the late Douglas Adams in his manual for humans in an alien world ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ which was: expect the unexpected. This is not a philosophy artificial intelligence will embrace easily or quickly. It is, however, a condition we have had to get used to on a regular basis in print on demand, which is how I justify this little preamble ramble because you know it’s best to expect the worst, then you may be pleasantly surprised rather than the other way round. If your default mode is that whatever the customer has sent you is wrong in some way, then you won’t be disappointed and instinctively look to find a fault rather than assume it’s correct and discover it doesn’t fit the dimensions or print properly, and before it’s gone too far along the print process. We all make mistakes; it’s all about reducing the chances of them happening before they get expensive in time and paper. Of course, reducing mistakes is also the impeccable logic behind the self-driving car, but when you hear that the driver who is now a passenger will be allowed to watch movies while he/she/they are being whisked through the busy streets or zoomed along bustling motorways, and only take control ‘when it becomes necessary’ the flaw is that it relies on AI to judge when it is necessary. By their very nature, accidents are unpredictable; otherwise, there would be fewer of them. Many are avoided by simple experience and judgement that anticipates they may occur and often only split seconds before they do. Removing both that second sight and the reaction time would seem
to be total folly. It is a human condition as important in the workplace as it is on the road. People already have so many distractions in their daily lives, as we know, because they are not even concentrating on their email messages while also scrolling through social media, browsing shopping choices and admiring cute kittens. The one job at a time philosophy is a distant memory, but it used to go with the advice that it was necessary to do at least one properly. Last month I used the example of a customer who had supplied several similar images, but which all turned out to be taken on different devices, with various modes of quality and clarity. This is increasingly common as people generally will have no specific memory of how an image originated and often no idea how it was edited or saved. This is where the first call in checking images should be using Adobe Bridge or Lightroom (other software is available) to check the finer details contained in the metadata. This is your first line of defence against the unexpected. In this case, although the images appeared to be almost identical at first glance, under more careful scrutiny, they weren’t. This month I had an artist who had had several images taken of different original artworks, and over some period of time, but again each on different cameras, phones and the like. The artist had no idea which was what until I spilt the beans, and we resolved it would be better to have them scanned properly rather than “a friend who has a good camera.” The problem is that so many people use digital imaging daily without understanding how it works and what is involved. Our eyes are amazing as, unlike a camera, we have two of them, and our brains are about to quickly adjust to lighting conditions and focus on the subject. The stereoscopic vision, which is an essential part of animal survival, allows us to determine perspective and dimension. These are all concepts the simple single-lens camera struggles to interpret, regardless of how clever the manufacturers claim it to be, so it’s common to get some MAY 2022 • QUICK PRINT PRO
