Guinea Pig, Super Pig or Okja?

A personal experience from an esteemed reader. Two airports recently installed screening machines that have enhanced the level of detection. Clearly an advanced AI component compared to the previous machines, the new ones were much slower than the usual ones. This well-seasoned, frequent traveler that never gets hung up in security was flagged on two trips, both for a tube of shaving cream that was slightly over the allowable size – likely 3.1 oz bottle with 3.04 oz cream that have flown more times than the number of days those machines had been working.

Once machines flag for the screeners to “go fetch”, all must be checked against one’s own intuition. One could overhear the operators complaining about the slowness and target precision of the machines on multiple occasions. Travelers were biting their lips. Madness abound.

Borderline size, opaque contents, post 9/11 era, better be safe than sorry. And machines will learn! Yes indeed and likely they are already operating better and will get better until they reach a certain point. You could notch the precision level up or down even in the complex environment of space exploration. Before I could finish this story, likely someone had already fine tuned the algorithm. As Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) asks in the movie Interstellar when the robot starts throwing crude jokes, “what’s your #humor setting, TARS?" As it answers that it's at 100%, he commands “I’d bring it down to 75%.” So until that speedy execution and true precision come, please line up the guinea pigs on both sides of the machines please.

My experience. A lady in front of me, who clearly does not fly often, had packed family size bottles of everything. She was embarrassed and almost in tears trying to throw things away or put at least some of the liquids into a few small Ziploc bags. Both Screeners 1&2 looked at the machine then her, gently gave her instructions and let her continue with whatever she could manage throwing away and repack. While one of her bags was still in the line, the Screener 1 said, “Gee, take out the watermelon out!” and I thought wow this lady really needs help, only to find out he had pulled my bag out.

I consider myself more than not, a black-belt level packer. Then I remembered “Ah my snack!”, as soon as the Screener 1 pulled out a nectarine – bigger than a ping pong ball but smaller than a tennis ball. Incredulous and with wide eyes, then a sigh, the Screener 2 said, “Somebody clearly needs a lesson on fruits.” I pinched myself not to laugh between the lady frantically repacking her suitcase and the Screener 2 shaking his head.

Perhaps a machine with artificial intelligence would not have mistaken a nectarine for a watermelon? Maybe. Although before human intervention and on pure images alone without detailed context, AI usually thinks cats are giants and airplanes are gnomes. Because people usually take up close picture of cats and pull back to capture the whole airplane.

My day was brighter than before. Uplifting moments of human-in-the-loop, humans deciding to be flexible to help a human, humans “notching others’ knob” down, and the triumphant Okja leaving with her snack.

Note: Super Pig is an imaginary farm animal in the movie Okja by the director Bong Joonho, who won an Academy Award for the movie Parasite.

What’s your machine-human “go fetch” story? Human+machine are super powerful and can be a fabulous duo. How did a human-machine duo make things better or lift your mood?

#artificialintelligence #travel #storytelling #humanmachineinterface