368 – Surveillance en XR: ervaar de duistere kanten van je eigen keuzes met Karen Palmer en Hans de Zwart

Randal Peelen:
[0:43] This week is a little different from what you're used to with Nerds on Table. We don't have one, but three episodes for you. From the Public Spaces Conference 2024 with the theme Taking Back the Internet. In this episode you'll hear about AI in society and how you can grow your knowledge by walking in other people's shoes in mixed reality experiences. Welcome to Met Nerds Om Tafel. I'm not sitting next to Jurian again, but I am Randal Peelen. And our guest nerds of today are two. The first is Hans de Zwart. We are still at the Public Spaces Conference 2024 with the theme Taking Back the Internet. Hans, you've been here before. You are a former director of Bits of Freedom, researcher and lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Science and Technology. Thank you for coming and nice to have you back.

Hans de Zwart:
[1:40] Very nice to be here again.

Randal Peelen:
[1:41] Yes, and you just did a panel that was about what was the impact of AI on society or on the society, how do they call it again?

Hans de Zwart:
[1:53] I don't even know, but I think it was about the future of AI and the role that art can play in it.

Randal Peelen:
[1:59] We have also brought in an artist, Karen Palmer. And I have to warn you, Nerds on the Table listeners, you have been listening to us for seven years. But this will be the first time we are going to speak in English. Because Karen Palmer doesn't speak Dutch.

Karen Palmer:
[2:13] Sorry.

Randal Peelen:
[2:15] Welcome in our podcast and congratulations on being the first English speaking guest that we actually found it necessary to switch over to English for. Because I think this is an interesting topic. That we really have to tackle. So thanks for joining us.

Karen Palmer:
[2:32] Well, thank you for accommodating my lack of Dutch language.

Randal Peelen:
[2:36] So to actually introduce you real quick, Karen Palmer, you're supposedly a visionary storyteller and award-winning XR creator. XR, that's mixed reality, right?

Karen Palmer:
[2:47] Yes, XR is extended reality.

Randal Peelen:
[2:49] Extended reality.

Karen Palmer:
[2:50] Which includes mixed reality, virtual reality, AI, augmented reality. Basically all forms of extended reality.

Randal Peelen:
[3:00] And as an AR artist, you try to tackle or explore the social implications of artificial intelligence and technology through immersive experience. That's me. Yeah. And I think you're probably most well-known because you made a movie or film or something in between, Consensus Gentium.

Karen Palmer:
[3:21] Well done in attempting to say that. And it's Latin, so it's not English or Dutch. So consensus gentium is Latin for if everyone believes that it must be true.

Randal Peelen:
[3:33] Okay.

Karen Palmer:
[3:33] So it's a comment on the society and our perception of reality.

Randal Peelen:
[3:37] And the consensus part I can follow.

Karen Palmer:
[3:39] Yeah, the consensus is everybody. And that is immersive experiencing using AI, which watches you back using artificial intelligence and facial recognition. Cognition and it's set in the near future world so that you can experience a world of pervasive surveillance and how it impacts you as a person and a citizen and it happens within the palm of your hand on a smartphone so the front-facing camera on the smartphone watches you as you interact with this world on the device so people are texting you or you're watching propaganda films from the government or influencers and you have a certain objectives to achieve to kind of prove your compliance to the state prove.

Randal Peelen:
[4:29] Your compliance this is already getting very dystopian real quick but it's not actually a film then is it.

Karen Palmer:
[4:35] It's an immersive experience so it's uses facial recognition and to monitor you and the narrative branches in real time depending on your eye gaze or emotional response yeah.

Randal Peelen:
[4:49] So i asked hans beforehand um what's some questions i really need to ask karen and the first thing he.

Karen Palmer:
[4:57] Mentioned is that you're um my lipstick maybe he.

Randal Peelen:
[5:02] Warned me that you actually tend to uh kind of embrace a certain character or or be in character like you're telling us from the stage that you're from the future you're uh warning us for a couple of possible futures that we could enter into? And is this a real conscious way of embracing your inner artist and trying to seduce us to build a better future? Or is this an act?

Karen Palmer:
[5:34] I'm quite offended that it was a character. This is the real me. The Karen Palmer is the character. so the storyteller from the future is my yeah persona and, That is really, I genuinely feel that we have a collective consciousness as a people. And I feel that I just tap into that as a creative in terms of where inspiration comes from, where the imagination comes from, where does it pop from. And that's part of my tapping in with the storyteller from the future.

Randal Peelen:
[6:11] I really like the angle you take there because I've already memorized the fact that there's someone from the future at this conference. And I think I'll remember this for a while. So it's a really clever way of putting it.

Karen Palmer:
[6:28] I feel that a lot of things that resonate with people, there's some aspect of truth in it. You know, it just connects with you on some kind of level. that maybe tomorrow when you're brushing your teeth you're like my that something about that made my hairs in the back of my neck go up or you know it really is a feeling you know more than it's intellectual and i a lot of my work is about this kind of collective truth that i see which is different to perception when we think of consensus gentium some things are just almost.

Karen Palmer:
[6:58] It's intuitive you just know in your spirit and some is a bit more manipulative like maybe be different truths about say politicians you know um so i feel this storyteller from the future and the stories i tell from the future uh when people hear these stories it really resonates with them and they get very nervous because they're like wow that seems really real and often when i create my experiences a year or two later they kind of pop up in this time um so all aspects of those realities. Like I made the experience Perception I owe, which is about the future of law enforcement, where you watch the film as if you're a cop and the film branches in real time, depending on how you interact with it.

Karen Palmer:
[7:46] And that was to show people that when they think, oh, yeah, AI is a computer, it's neutral, it knows everything. That's actually coded by a person, a developer who has their own particular biases that is coded into these systems. So if they are biased against people of color, say that will be coded in. And so that when people do these experiences and they interact with the characters as a cop, if they are aggressive, then the character in the film, their character becomes aggressive to the person. And if they're calm as a cop they can de-escalate the situation and from doing these experiences people go oh i understand a little bit about how ai might work because it's visceral i'm connected i'm there and they start to have a start develop a different relationship with ai and then when i connect made that the very next year was um the first system came out well it was the first case of a black man um robert williams who is misidentified by an algorithm and arrested because of bias within a law enforcement system which is basically the real world equivalent of my experience yes.

Hans de Zwart:
[8:53] And it wasn't um surprising that that was a black person who was misidentified.

Karen Palmer:
[8:58] Yeah it was kind of obvious in a way and that's why it was in my film is that if the majority of of systems particularly up to now things are changing but have been developed by um white males and they if those white males have bias they're going to program that into the system so that's why there's a real need for diversity in creating

Karen Palmer:
[9:20] these systems to kind of expand the perception of these data sets yeah.

Randal Peelen:
[9:25] It's real hard to imagine being uh from a different race if If you have experienced being, in my case, white all your life. Now, I think racism is subtly a little bit different in the Netherlands than it is in the States, obviously, culturally. But still, I find it very hard to imagine. Like a colleague of mine told me, he's black and he told me, most of the time when I'm driving at night through my city in my Tesla Model X, I get pulled over. And I told him like why because I've never been pulled over in my life and he told me well it happens a couple of and it didn't happen in my previous car and I think it would be really interesting to, experience that maybe through uh virtual reality me driving in my car being pulled over and then afterwards getting a question like okay why do we think you were pulled over it wouldn't occur to me for a second that it would could possibly because uh be because of the color of my skin i would think about my car or traffic tickets that i still had standing out i really love to experience something like that wow.

Karen Palmer:
[10:38] I'm just so blown away by our different realities that.

Randal Peelen:
[10:43] We live.

Karen Palmer:
[10:43] Within there is actually an xr experience called driving while black not driving while black it's eating while being some traveling while black.

Randal Peelen:
[10:52] Yeah uh.

Karen Palmer:
[10:52] And it's related to the south um but what you're saying.

Randal Peelen:
[10:58] Texas i don't know where but it was to do i.

Karen Palmer:
[11:01] Think like back in time, like to do with voting. But I'm just so blown away by what you've just said. And also when we shot Perception.io, we had the exact same conversation with the two characters, black and white. And the black character is exactly what your black character friend said. And the white character was like, oh, no, what happened is he said, then the DOP said, oh God, I had this experience where we finished the video shoot late and we had to drive back and i drove back in the passenger seat of the white guy and the white guy kept just like breaking all the red lights he's like man you gotta slow down you gotta slow down and he said the police came and they were like buddy why do you think um we stopped you and the white guy was like come on man give me a break it's late what did you expect it's late man why you stopped me and the black guy was in this passenger seat going oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die he's never been he would never even ever consider having this conversation say being in the car was It was like way too close.

Randal Peelen:
[11:58] Not even a conversation. It's like...

Karen Palmer:
[12:00] Just being close proximity is like death. And all the black people on set were like, he said what? And he's still alive. He goes, yeah. He felt basically he was living in the alternative universe.

Randal Peelen:
[12:10] Yeah, yeah.

Karen Palmer:
[12:10] Which is kind of...

Randal Peelen:
[12:12] He's actually having a discussion with his police officer.

Karen Palmer:
[12:16] But also quite aggressively. Yeah. Where we as black people, we have to become very passive, you know, immediately to disarm the situation. So these are some of the kind of... Conversations which these my works kind of draw out you know we want to use the tech but it's more about exploring the societal implications of ai um which

Karen Palmer:
[12:38] underpins the technology yeah.

Randal Peelen:
[12:40] So how difficult is it then to make these kinds of experiences.

Karen Palmer:
[12:45] I'm tempted to call them film still but they are immersive experiences but because i'm a filmmaker they have a strong film component but how.

Randal Peelen:
[12:52] Do you go about because you have to consider a lot of branches that could.

Karen Palmer:
[12:56] Happen in the story it's a lot of work it is a lot of work and some nobody's going to see all the different branches so i first of all start with my concept and what i want the participant to experience yeah and how i want them to feel will determine the story arc and then also the tech i use i don't go oh wow i want to use ai wow i want to use vr i go okay what is my story i'm like a proper arty arty creative and then that will determine and just for the past since 2016, it's only been ai for me because i was like i want to create an imperceptible interface so that's.

Randal Peelen:
[13:38] A perceptible interface.

Karen Palmer:
[13:39] So you watch my films and then they branch because they watch you back but i don't put a headset on you so it's really to make explicit choices no because it's your face your it reacts on your face uh article in um a magazine once said with my films that your brain is the joystick ah okay cool right yeah actually.

Randal Peelen:
[13:59] Your face is but still.

Karen Palmer:
[14:00] Yeah okay but still it's kind of like you have an emotion or a thought or a feeling and then it's reflected So if you feel aggressive, then it comes out in like how you frown.

Randal Peelen:
[14:12] But would it be fair to say that that then actually is more of an app?

Karen Palmer:
[14:17] The latest film Consensus Gentium is an app, Perception.io was on the film space, but it was very important for me to create a format of an experience. Go to the people because i love doing what i do but it's in a very kind of for want of a better word privileged space yeah you know lots of regular people aren't going to be going to some amazing conferences like this or south by southwest and it's very important for me to bring this message to the people so i put it on the app and actually it's going to be available to download on the app store it's going to be or is it already it's going to be we're doing it right now like i I shouldn't really be here. I was supposed to, my team were not very happy with me, but as I'm coming to Netherlands, so yeah, they'll be happy that I mentioned it on the podcast, but we're developing it now in the UK and we're going to be releasing on the app store during the summer of 2024.

Randal Peelen:
[15:11] I'm really looking forward to that because I liked the idea a lot and I want that to succeed. Actually, I really, I really love to have more of those kinds of experiences. Thank you. Creative stuff in the app store. Hans. So there's something going on here. Is that I think I see a trend where more and more artists are interested in both tech, AI, but also heavy stuff like government surveillance and trying to use art, to convey that message, that story. At the same time, some of these artists aren't that technical at all. They just have to use this as a tool to be creative. Do you think artists have an important role to play in these kinds of stories and maybe even, how do you say it, activism maybe?

Hans de Zwart:
[16:10] So I don't necessarily think that the role of the artist is to be an activist. The role of the artist is to be an artist. But they have an essential role to play, I think. And so in the panel, I quoted my favorite thinker, Marshall McLuhan, thinker about technology, who in his book, Understanding Media, in the beginning, he cites Ezra Pound, the writer, who says artists are the antenna of our society. So they have the ability to see things much earlier than the rest of the world. That is probably, I think, a characteristic of great artists quite often. And so we tend to have this maybe layman's idea of art as sort of self-expression or this thing. But art also has very much this prophetic quality to it. And I think it's very important to listen to that and to sort of enable and create a space for artists to do that. So it's important to fund that type of art because it can help us prepare to deal with the societal and psychological consequences of a world that is changing through technology, if that makes sense.

Randal Peelen:
[17:26] It does, but can you think of any examples from the top of your head?

Hans de Zwart:
[17:32] Um so probably for the audience of um met nerds on tafel do you know what that means actually it's with nerds at the table around the table around the table like we're.

Randal Peelen:
[17:43] At this table together yeah.

Hans de Zwart:
[17:45] So um yeah and maybe black mirror that's like a hugely impactful uh um i don't.

Randal Peelen:
[17:54] Think of of black mirror as art but actually it could be considered art yeah why not obviously.

Hans de Zwart:
[17:59] Yeah but But yeah, it can't be that it's no longer art when you like it, Randal.

Randal Peelen:
[18:05] Oh, okay.

Karen Palmer:
[18:06] Oh my God.

Randal Peelen:
[18:07] Let's go deep here.

Karen Palmer:
[18:09] I think you meant because it was mainstream, but God, it's cheeky, isn't it?

Randal Peelen:
[18:13] Yeah, I think that it's… My goodness.

Karen Palmer:
[18:15] That's a cheeky response.

Randal Peelen:
[18:16] No, we Dutch people are very direct. You have to dial our directness down a bit.

Karen Palmer:
[18:21] That was like a drill in the head. That's that direct? I'm going to watch out.

Randal Peelen:
[18:24] I didn't feel it that way. No, no, I like this.

Karen Palmer:
[18:26] Okay, I'm English. I'm not Dutch, just to let you know, yeah?

Randal Peelen:
[18:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karen Palmer:
[18:31] Say they're masochistic, but okay, let's keep going.

Hans de Zwart:
[18:34] Yeah, so Black Mirror is, I think, a very good example of that. I think Karen's work is that. Paolo Sirios, who was also in the panel, he does a lot of work around surveillance. And so it's like you reframe things.

Hans de Zwart:
[18:50] Ideally, you make people think or feel and think sort of with a future focus.

Randal Peelen:
[18:59] Yeah okay so you've been the director of bits of freedom before um so obviously there is a kind of activist in you already um certainly around topics uh surrounding privacy and uh, holding the government accountable and stuff but do you think, what kind of role does art play in that and what kind of role do you see yourself playing because i don't think you consider yourself an artist and and still i think there's a lot of, warning signs artists can give but there's also the here and now and the activist who has to sound the alarm and gets actually get stuff done that doesn't have to make you think about them but actually have to give you tangible concrete steps to take towards building that future.

Hans de Zwart:
[19:54] Yeah. So Bits of Freedom, for Karen, it's an NGO focusing on privacy and freedom of speech on the internet. And when I started out there, we had this very strong relationship, presence of both i would say computer scientists and legal people lawyers both.

Randal Peelen:
[20:16] Could be considered nerds.

Hans de Zwart:
[20:17] Yeah those are very much nerds so i would say this is the one yeah this is the one place where uh where it nerds and legal nerds share a table and like each other and um and i explicitly explicitly added the component of art and imagination, maybe, storytelling, as sort of a third branch that was necessary to be a successful activist. Because you need to be able to tell stories about what it is that you want. You need to imagine the consequences of the things that are happening now. You need to create alternative futures. And also, you need to be able to sort of sell your story, in a sense. So, and for that, you need storytelling because stories are the only things that resonate with people. Nobody likes to read the AI act, which is hundreds of pages of, yeah, it's not a thing that anybody but a lawyer, but a particular lawyer is interested in. And so you need people who can tell the story of that act in a sense and who can translate it into something that resonates with people. So for me, it's an essential thing. I mean, there's other forms of imagination.

Hans de Zwart:
[21:39] So I'm a philosopher and as an ethicist, I use this concept of moral imagination, which is this thing like trying to imagine what could possibly go wrong with the technology that you're designing or making, et cetera. And it starts with asking very simple questions like, what could somebody with bad intentions do with this technology? Or which people are excluded by this technology? Does it work the same way for everybody? Or what is the worst possible imaginable headline you can imagine in a newspaper about this technology? What would be the and so if you start working through these things and preferably in a in a very diverse, group of people with different standpoints then you can get, yeah you can start to get an idea of what the consequences could be, and so but it's important to create space for that and it's important to have the political will for that because for me the technology is actually never the problem it's the politics behind it so like And.

Randal Peelen:
[22:49] The unintended consequences as well.

Hans de Zwart:
[22:52] Yes, so technology always has unintended consequences, but like very often in the, you know, You can't be too surprised if you're scoring welfare applicants with a fraud risk model that you're going to create and damage people. It's not that hard to imagine that that could be a consequence. And so even though it might have not been intended, it's also like...

Karen Palmer:
[23:23] If the people that created the Dutch welfare system had done your Miro exercise, exercise probably after half an hour though they said okay time out let's not do this well instead.

Randal Peelen:
[23:33] Of that we chose to just when go ahead and do it and then um.

Hans de Zwart:
[23:38] Deal with.

Randal Peelen:
[23:39] The consequences for a lot of years afterwards so.

Hans de Zwart:
[23:43] I used to teach at primary school and then i had lots of students doing shitty thing of course and then i would tell them that was our job i'd be angry at them and then they said i didn't do it on purpose and then i say well you also did not not purposely not do it. And that's my point. You should have not done it on purpose. Like, I don't mind. So to me, it's very much about thinking about what you're doing, conscious decision, intentional decisions. I mean, here in the city of Amsterdam, we've had also another welfare risks algorithm, which was basically created because they had the smart data science to make it. They were looking for a poem to solve.

Karen Palmer:
[24:27] Attach it to.

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Randal Peelen:
[25:55] Yeah and at the same time i catch myself thinking like these kinds of points that you make from a more like an activism standpoint sounds very principled to me sometimes i think it's well this is all imaginary there's a future that could happen but i don't think it will uh, will turn out that way that quickly and then probably we need artists like karen to actually paint a picture of that future and make us um imagine or maybe even experience that future firsthand and see okay now if this were to happen how would that feel and how uh what would it be like to to live through such an experience because i'm always um i'm always frustrated if I try to imagine a future where everything goes wrong and I still think, well, I have enough money to move over there where it's still going to be dry when the flooding comes. And yeah, I'll escape. I'll manage. No, so no problems here. And then having the courage to imagine being in someone else's shoe, I think it's very difficult to get people there. And that's the thing you're trying to do on a daily basis, I think.

Karen Palmer:
[27:17] Yeah, well, I'm kind of doing one step removed from what you're saying in that I'm enabling people to experience a potential future today. Yeah. I'm by being a branching narrative it's making them aware of their role it gives them agency in the story and so if they do a certain if they make a certain subconscious decision, that's going to lead down a certain path now you're happy with that path are you happy with that ending and because it's subconscious it's not something that they can go it's something which is real and true they don't even wear of it themselves so it's kind of going back to your point about intentionality like the child didn't but you you could have chosen not to do it because they're just not self-aware so my work is about making people self-aware of their the consequences of their actions so then they can't say afterwards well i didn't know like your kids will say i didn't know so with my experiences you you have these options you're a character in this film and you download this government app and you can offer up this concept called auto self-surveillance where you give the government access to all your devices.

Randal Peelen:
[28:26] So you're opting in then.

Karen Palmer:
[28:27] Yeah, you're opting in to this concept called auto self-surveillance where you give them access to all your devices and your computers, your phone, and they can use that as a surveillance, a personal surveillance network. And then you get extra privileges for that.

Randal Peelen:
[28:42] Of course, yeah.

Karen Palmer:
[28:43] Of course, right?

Randal Peelen:
[28:44] There's a carrot at the end of that stick.

Karen Palmer:
[28:46] Yeah, and then also that's in your house. So, you know, people that come in your house, they're being surveilled and you've given the government permission for that. And so for that, you get certain privileges, but there's consequences for that. So through my experience, you say get to understand the consequences of compliance. That at the beginning, it might seem like, oh, this is a bit more comfortable, but where you get to is probably not going to be a super comfortable place to be. But then also there's consequences for that the same way for dissidents. If you go, I'm not going to opt into that, then you end up on a different list a different kind of bracket and you end up with a different ending which is also problematic because you don't have those privileges but you have a different type of freedom, So my work, it's not a judgment when you do my experiences. You just have these different endings. And then if you don't like them, you can do the experience again. You can experience the future in a different way. And then I want you to start to contemplate and reflect to see, are you happy without those? And where is your life going? What decisions are you making now? And where could that potentially lead?

Hans de Zwart:
[29:54] So I think it's very powerful that in your experiences, is you put people in a role which forces them to sort of empathize with others in a sense. So we have this, I think we have this nearly ironic situation where, so my favorite example of this is, it used to be the case, I'm not sure how it is now because I have left LinkedIn years ago, but in the past it would, people when they didn't have a job in LinkedIn at their job title, So they would say looking for new opportunities, something like that. And then LinkedIn created this feature where it would ask you to congratulate your connection about being two years into a new job. But in this case, it would be two years. Congratulate Karen for two years of looking for new opportunities. And LinkedIn never created the option to say like, I don't have a job or whatever. And I was like, yes, of course, because the people who work at LinkedIn, they cannot imagine a world in which you don't have a job that you can sort of...

Karen Palmer:
[31:06] Two years, you'd be living on the street.

Hans de Zwart:
[31:08] And so there is this, I mean... And maybe it's too generalizing, but of course, we have a lot of neurodiversity in computer science.

Randal Peelen:
[31:18] Let's say. Thank you.

Hans de Zwart:
[31:19] We also have a lot of people who are maybe not the best empathizers in the world. And so these type of experiences can sort of help with that. So my personal favorite thing, so it doesn't need to even be this high tech. You have this computer game called Papers, Please. I don't know if you've ever seen it.

Randal Peelen:
[31:37] Papers, Please, yeah.

Hans de Zwart:
[31:38] It's a game where you're putting the role of somebody at the customs or at the immigration at a border.

Randal Peelen:
[31:46] Duane.

Hans de Zwart:
[31:47] Yeah. You have to check basically people's passports and decide whether you want to let them in or not. And then it adds these.

Randal Peelen:
[31:54] You're really powerful in this game. Sounds right.

Hans de Zwart:
[31:56] And it adds these complications. You have a sick wife at home. They need money. Your salary is actually not enough. There's people there that are willing to bribe you a little. The rules keep changing. You get these moral dilemmas. And it forces you to realize, it basically allows you to understand why corruption starts to exist.

Randal Peelen:
[32:18] But it also allows you to be really savage and just deny everybody and be a god or something.

Hans de Zwart:
[32:25] But then it doesn't end well. There's a similar game where you have to be like, you've just come into power as a president in a Latin America country in the 70s or something. You have to decide, am I going to side with the US or with the Russians? You have, of course, mothers that are protesting against their disappeared sons. You have angry farmers. You have, and no matter, I think how you play this game, eventually you'll end dead on the floor with some coup with somebody, with the army taking over.

Randal Peelen:
[32:59] Of course, yeah.

Hans de Zwart:
[32:59] That's how it ends. But these experiences are...

Randal Peelen:
[33:02] Sounds legit.

Hans de Zwart:
[33:03] It this experience has a wonderful way and i imagine i haven't gone through your experience karen but i imagine that it's the same there that that they that they instead of sort of making the world simpler they're actually making the they're showing the complexity of the world yes yes.

Karen Palmer:
[33:21] Um just to add two things i'm loving your examples by the way is um one time i was in russia doing a talk and i met this professor there and they said to me something found that always stayed with me and they said, they were a professor from film and they said, they don't think it's the art itself, which is the catalyst for change, but it's kind of the reflection and the conversation afterwards where it really happens. And I was like, wow, that's so deep because I really build in this kind of emotional decompression with my work.

Karen Palmer:
[33:52] Like these conversations is like creating new neural networks in our brains, which is really where things are going to start to expand out. And the second thing, slightly different to what you said, is that I'm not actually into empathy. I'm into moving through fear because I'm a little bit jaded about empathy because empathy has been around for a while now and there's been no changes. Right. And there's all this like, oh, if I can only, you know, understand how you feel, it's like, well, it's a bit more complicated than that. So my work is a lot about moving through fear about how giving us the onus on what we do so i use parkour because i'm a free runner as part of this psychology and methodology within my work it's always about putting the mirror back on you and getting it's uncomfortable for you and getting to move you move through fear so it's not about how the other person's feeling or relating to them it's like well let's just focus on you there's always somebody else you can point your finger at what's stopping you from doing this thing like most of the times I when I speak to people why they're not doing something it's because of fear like I can't do that thing because if I pursue my dream then maybe I won't have money for the rent or maybe I might lose my boyfriend or my girlfriend I can't buy those things and it's always preceded with the word if you know fear is like this kind of illusion and my work is about let me kind of put you through these if scenarios, and then you're going to experience them from yourself and then you're going to wonder is that the worst that could actually happen like if i come i'm compliant at the beginning so.

Randal Peelen:
[35:22] In a weird way you're actually trying to instill some fear as well.

Karen Palmer:
[35:26] I'm trying to make people confront fear, by but in a gentle film way it's very safe it's like a film world but it's like i'm using almost the power of visualization but through film so what happens with my experience is you do them and then the film branches depending on how you respond and so if you're angry then you get a narrative responding to your anger and then if you leave the if the kind of the film then collapses and you're looking at in the real world it's exactly the same thing if you're an aggressive person the film will respond to your anger so i'm kind of giving you i call them reality simulators that it's giving you a little insight to your world that you can

Karen Palmer:
[36:02] go away reflect and then come back and maybe change something could.

Randal Peelen:
[36:06] I also just hold a happy face towards the camera.

Karen Palmer:
[36:09] And watching it unfold as well okay so i'm gonna answer that seriously is that um i had someone a friend of mine in new york and did the experience and he got through to the end because he was very calm and i said how was that and he goes well inside i was seething i said oh shit he goes no that's the thing everybody always says to me wow you're so calm you know you're so always in control he goes so my work is about how you're perceived so he's always perceived as control so the camera couldn't actually in this instance you're right actually it's not the brain more the face is how he was perceived was he was focused on being perceived as calm yeah and so that's what was being registered it's also.

Randal Peelen:
[36:50] A beautiful lesson to learn through that experience.

Karen Palmer:
[36:53] So no problems here exactly it's all about self-awareness about how people are perceiving you so me and him had a great conversation afterwards about yeah that's how he's perceived and this is a confirmation that you know he's not always happy and he was get being treated for depression and how you know he's really got to kind of focus on dealing with the core of what's happening because now he's putting on a happy face and i think that was one of the things that made him go towards a therapy because he was like this is really not who i am and i really need to tackle this this experience.

Randal Peelen:
[37:27] Is really useful as.

Karen Palmer:
[37:28] Well yeah it's very very much about self-awareness i.

Hans de Zwart:
[37:32] Also sorry does it use emotion detection.

Karen Palmer:
[37:35] Yes so i made three projects the first one was emotion detection calm anger and fear the second one was calm was fear calm anger and fear and eye gaze. And the third one, consensus gentium, is just the eye gaze.

Hans de Zwart:
[37:50] And do you think that emotion detection works the same for everybody?

Karen Palmer:
[37:56] Can you elaborate on your question a bit further, please?

Hans de Zwart:
[37:59] Yes, I can imagine that there's... I'm not 100% sure that our facial expressions of these emotions are universal.

Karen Palmer:
[38:09] I agree 100%, particularly around culture. However, when I first did my experience, I was working with Bruneau University and the professor of computational science, I think this was 2016, with my project Riot. And he's Chinese. And I said, how's this going to work? Like cultural and personality. But he said it's basically mathematical. mathematical like if you're if you frown or if there's a micro expression or your your mouth is neutral so very basic universal um and mathematical and micro so it worked i was really shocked like i was like well i didn't hardly see anything on that person's face and but it was just enough of a trigger but if the person isn't receptive at all um physically facially then it can't pick up anything but to answer your question i think the subtlety it can still detect but it also.

Hans de Zwart:
[39:03] Doesn't have to be correct like it's not an end of the world if if if the machine thinks it's fear and it's actually.

Karen Palmer:
[39:10] Anxiety anxiety.

Hans de Zwart:
[39:12] Or it's actually something else and i mean.

Karen Palmer:
[39:15] The the one you're true that the fear and the anger sometimes got a little bit um was the one that got confused the algorithm And this was in 2016, right? Well, we had to know this. You couldn't even Google like facial detection and AI, like no, it was nobody's landscape. And so it was kind of almost like sticky tape and code sticking in the back, but it was very accurate. But the one that did confuse was anger and fear. And then. In life as well you know sometimes if i'm having an argument with somebody or disagreement or something i might move into anger and fear during the conversation anyway so that's quite reflective of how we are as humans there's.

Randal Peelen:
[39:56] Something i was thinking about as well we don't have the time to dive real deep into that because you mentioned fear.

Karen Palmer:
[40:02] Just now but.

Randal Peelen:
[40:04] I was also thinking about the difference between maybe not empathy but maybe call it compassion or.

Karen Palmer:
[40:10] Something that.

Randal Peelen:
[40:12] You're trying to instill not only fear but also compassion not necessarily empathy.

Karen Palmer:
[40:16] Um it's more about i find empathy personally my interpretation is like you're on the other person like how are they feeling or what's happening with them and i'm just like okay let's we got to put the mirror back on ourselves because for me.

Randal Peelen:
[40:31] If i have empathy then.

Karen Palmer:
[40:32] I actually.

Randal Peelen:
[40:33] Do care how we feel if i have compassion i'm like Like, yeah, okay.

Karen Palmer:
[40:36] But I'm not focused.

Randal Peelen:
[40:37] Too bad for you, but I don't care.

Karen Palmer:
[40:39] This is more about you, like the mirrors on you. So if you do my experience and the perception I owe, and you're a cop and you're interacting with a character, you interact with both a black and white character, and I film scenarios where the person has mental health issues or another scenario where the person's a violent criminal. So you don't know which person it is, but there's clues there on the scene. Um so but to answer your question is so it's not really about that person it's how you respond to that person that if you are becoming aggressive and then afterwards you find that they have mental health that's for you to look at in yourself and how you reacted to somebody and making that judgment and what you're basing that on so it's about evaluating this is my word perception a lot of my work is expanding your perception of reality i work with a neuroscientist as part of my development for this and i was like yeah i want to shift perception he goes no you can't shift perception you can expand it by including other people's yeah so if you think that i don't want someone to feel empathy for that person the mirror's on you i want to expand your perception because you can have a greater understanding of the circumstance and situation and the consequences for them and yourself would.

Randal Peelen:
[41:54] Be really beautiful if you managed to pull that up off through an app.

Karen Palmer:
[41:57] Well that's the plan with consensus gentium and also activate agency that's big thing about my work so the consensus gentium was the first part of that and then we're now in post development for consensus gentium 2 and consensus gentium 3 where consensus gentium 1 was highlighting the problem which is surveillance bias in tech and all that amazing stuff and part two is looking at the solution like am i really going to be spending the rest of my life begging big tech to please be transparent, please have some governance, please have some regulation, please, we really need this. Like, you know what? Why don't we just make our own, Can I swear? No.

Randal Peelen:
[42:36] Yeah, you can.

Karen Palmer:
[42:36] Why don't we just make our own fucking systems? Even if we start today, it's going to take 30 years. Let's start. Let's try. Let's not be begging them or lobbying them or demonstrating or protesting. Please do this for us. Let's just fucking do it ourselves or at least try.

Randal Peelen:
[42:50] That's why we're taking back the internet today.

Karen Palmer:
[42:52] That's why we're taking back the internet. Okay, last question.

Randal Peelen:
[42:56] Because I did notice an interesting thing. I started off in this podcast calling it a film and then actually noticing, no, it's not a film at all. Maybe you should do your research we already it's infectious yeah we already call it a game yes it is being direct I love it yeah and actually don't don't don't don't don't worry about other people's reactions just being direct and we know we all are so we can we can we can we can handle it we're not human.

Karen Palmer:
[43:29] We don't have any.

Randal Peelen:
[43:30] Feeling yeah Dutch aren't human at all so we started calling it a game actually and i think there's something in that because uh normally i'm sitting next to jerry on ubers who is my uh companion in this podcast and he is a journalist but he reviews games and i think most people think of a game like something thing you do uh for for for fun but games actually can be really philosophical and actually instill some points there's like the fallout series or mass effect series that that are actually games that you can start a safe game have it spend three games and then have multiple endings depending on choices you made before but and here is the point i'm a question i'm trying to ask in the mass effect series uh you're in space there's a couple of races and they all uh need to work together in the end to get something done. It doesn't matter what, but you can be really good or really bad in that game, and that's role-playing. That's fun to do, and they call that the paragon style of playing or the renegade style of playing, and they actually tell you which is which. So if you're talking to someone, they say, this is the paragon answer, and this is a renegade answer, so you're going to be good or bad or neutral.

Randal Peelen:
[44:53] I once tried to do a Renegade playthrough. I couldn't do it. I really had trouble clicking that option. And if I did, I made a save game before, clicked the option to see what happens, then load the previous save file and then do the Renegade option either way. And before the very end of the game, I also made a save game first, then tried all the different outcomes and reload. And then afterwards I decided I like this one the best and then loaded the game back before the end. Do the great ending that I love the most and then stop playing for the rest of my life and decide this is the end I want.

Karen Palmer:
[45:36] So it's… Oh my God. Do you want to spend the rest of the podcast analyzing this dude or what?

Randal Peelen:
[45:42] I'm wondering if there's a possibility in your experience to go about it this way because you have to play through the entire thing each time.

Karen Palmer:
[45:51] I've had people who have done my experience and sat there, it's half an hour each one, sat there for two hours or over two hours to get as many different branching narratives as they could find because they were very curious. They didn't, the ending, maybe their initial ending was the safe ending. And then they were curious because there's different branches, but there's three distinct endings where you're fully compliant and you're basically your... Consciousness is uploaded to the cloud because that's really where you're going to end up you're totally totally compliant digitally compliant even and all your um sounds.

Randal Peelen:
[46:28] Like eternal life as well.

Karen Palmer:
[46:29] Yeah eternal i'd love some you'd love some oh my god you see that's you that's consistent with your with your with you basically in the other game and then the other ending was um where you're exited out of a digital world and you've got no digital identity or control so then you're very much limited in your mobility. And then there's one in the middle. So you can go and you can do multiple ones if you want.

Randal Peelen:
[46:56] I'm really looking forward to it. And thanks for both creating this experience and sharing it with us as well. And thanks for your time talking to us in this podcast. I know Hans needs to go. So we're pressed for time. So I'm going to switch back to Dutch and have one

Randal Peelen:
[47:13] more question for you. But that's the way I have to end this podcast. Is he going to ask me in Dutch? tradition no no no no i'm not in the.

Karen Palmer:
[47:19] End i'm joking so.

Randal Peelen:
[47:21] The first uh guest was karen palmer karen thanks for joining us and thanks for taking the time to do so um can you point us anywhere online where people can uh learn more about you Oh.

Karen Palmer:
[47:45] Okay. So, um, there's a consensus gentium, um, which they see the spelling in the podcast.

Randal Peelen:
[47:53] .ai.

Karen Palmer:
[47:53] Is the website, but we're about doing a revamp because we're about to launch the app. Um, and there's my social media, like my Insta is storyteller from the future. Okay and yeah you could and my website's karenpalmer.uk yeah so they can find out when the app's going to be released on the Consensus Gentium website you need to update.

Randal Peelen:
[48:17] The Consensus Gentium site because they're.

Karen Palmer:
[48:20] In the process of revamping it it may even be the certificate has been revamped, I'm being exposed it's expired actually so oh my god are you going to update this one are you putting me on the you're putting me on blast we're the nerds we have to warn you you're an artist you're warning us I'm supposed to be some techno storyteller from the future shit and I'm being exposed on this podcast, abort abort I'm now going back to the future no no no I've been exposed I can still visit the website I am I'm going back to the future if you accept the exception I'm not I'm not staying no longer in this present listeners, I'm putting the links in the show notes I will see you in the future, I won't tell you what happens to this podcast in the future the certificates

Karen Palmer:
[49:01] will be fixed in the future yeah yeah yeah We promise.

Randal Peelen:
[49:05] Hans de Zwart, where can people find out more about you?

Hans de Zwart:
[49:09] By typing my name in a search engine.

Randal Peelen:
[49:12] And not in LinkedIn.

Hans de Zwart:
[49:13] Yes, and I said, why would you do that? Instead of that, I want to advise people to join the fantastic reading club of the 99% Invisible podcast about the power broker, the biography of Robert Moses.

Randal Peelen:
[49:28] Is what the book.

Hans de Zwart:
[49:30] Is what further from the most joy provides this year.

Randal Peelen:
[49:33] Power brokers who write on thank you for now thank you very much for listening and see you next time.