TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Policy Proposal: Release a Minotaur Into Canary Wharf feat Dr Eleanor Janega

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

We speak with friend of the show and returning guest Dr Eleanor Janega about a recent tech newsletter that compared the advent of ChatGPT to the invention of the heavy plow. But we also had to discuss a startup making surveillance-tech vending machines that will aggressively misgender you, and more. Get the whole thing on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/policy-proposal-100435433 *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

It's a bit like cooler screens, right? Where it's like, we have a vending machine that's a big screen on it, instead of just the glass, which was boring. So now you can't see if your toilet's stuck in the spring or not. And with the big screen you also can show ads and therefore generate more revenue. Now, much also like cooler screens, one of the six items, one of the six little cards on their website, says, data. You can forgo guesswork and make informed decisions about sales and operations based

on comprehensive reports. Is that gonna do some predictive shit off of this, aren't they? Including... You look like you want a 12. Measuring foot traffic. Gender. Age. Hold on. Hold on a fucking minute. The vending machine clocks me? Yeah, the gending machine. I can get misgen...

I can get misvended? Like what? C. You can get misgendered and you can also be forced to have a twirl. L. Yeah, absolutely. Yo, do I order a twirl like an AGP? C. No, what it was is you order a twirl and it gives you a Yorkie. L. I would kill myself. What the fuck?

C. Yeah. It's the vending machine. The vending machine that's just like... The gender critical vending machine. Yeah, I mean, I can't... I don't feel like I can trust the vending machine company to have like a woke view on gender, right? Like... Why is there a vending machine in this women's toilet?

How come this vending machine is displaying some very odd Harry Potter fanfiction? With our smart vending machine, you get two devices in one, they say. An unattended retail device and a digital signage display. The mighty mix of POS, point of sale, and DOOH, digital out of home, so pause and do a dooo. The amazing mix of piece of shit and dough. Brings you a terrible bun. I also like the unattended retail device, which really like, I understand what they mean by it, but it

really implies that it's like being left to its own devices. Like that it could just do anything. In the Soviet Union, they would have an attendant in a little kiosk next to the vending machine. Attended does not provide advice. I think it's because unattended retail device implies that it should be attended, but it is. Like an unmanned vending vehicle. Yeah, like unattended steamrolling. You're like, oh no. What you're missing, let me tell you what you're missing is that, and this is something

I've really learned over the course of doing this show, is that when you are a tech company trying to disrupt something normal, you have to talk about it like a police officer describing a suspect. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So a gentleman of a vending nature. An unattended outdoor revenue solution is a vending machine. It can't just be a vending machine. It has to be.

Myself and my colleague approached the unattended outdoor vending machine. Yeah. And then it said PC Shufflesworth was a pretty lady. It clocked PC Shufflesworth. Wait, are we canonically making PC Shufflesworth a trans man now? Yes. PC Shufflesworth. So. From the TV licensing auditing video from ten years ago. So it says, you can display advertisements.

And this is one of the reasons why it wants to collect all this data. Yeah. Is because if I'm a university, say, University of Riley, and I have a whole bunch of new automated outdoor retail vending platform solutions, I want to be able to know, to not put your keys by the women's toilets. I want to be able to target women. I want to be like to know, like, to not put Yorkies by the women's toilets. ALICE I want to be able to target women, I want to be like, hey, have you considered signing up for a computer science class or something else that you want to increase female participation in?

ZACH Yeah, so, they, so they, this is why maybe you, as a vending administrator, you'd want to spy on everybody who's possibly using the vending machines. ALICE I think it's fine to give the boss of vending machines Panopticon level powers, so that the vending machines can display a little International Women's Day thing. They do display a very funny ad, which I will pass around the room in a moment. So they also allow you to display ads, so you can display advertisements for products

sold in the machine, sure, like a chump or an idiot. Yeah, or a chump or an idiot. Yeah. Or a chump. Yeah. Or you can display programmatic media. You can have a programmatic media purchasing solution, which basically means just like normal internet ads, people will buy ad space on your vending machine and ad auctions vending machines in your area. Yeah. Which can let, which quote leverage in vendor AI and data to enable targeted marketing. So you walk up to the vending machine, and then it just basically tells a whole bunch of stuff about you, and then broadcasts that to everyone around you in the form of an ad.

It just reads you for filth. Just like, I go up to the vending machine and everyone else is like, why the fuck are they trying to sell me on transgender shit? Why are cat ears coming out? Why is there an advert for a giant piss funnel? What's going on? To get you biased for Dyle Valorate? I'm sick of this fucking predicted thing. You buy one piss funnel and they're like, do you want to buy another piss funnel? No, I just bought one. I already have one, idiot. Obviously, yeah. Why don't you go advertise this to someone without a piss funnel?

Where am I going to put the other one? My ass? What am I trying to do other one? My ass? What am I trying to do? Funnel multiple people's piss? Yeah. That's why I bought a big fist funnel. It's a wide angle funnel. See, this joke does not work for the cat ears though, because you know those bitches all

have 10 pairs. That's true, yeah. So, there you go. That's where we fall down. What, you want your ears to be the same every day? Come on. Impressed. This is impressed.

Earlier this month, a vending machine at the University of Waterloo showed an error message. The error message on the screen said, Invenda.vending.facialrecognition.app.exe on the screen. Great. Uh oh. They could have called it anything else. You just have to be marginally less... Obvious.

Yes. And even like a sinister code name would be... Something like audience improvement calibration. Way more sinister. Like the Masquerade Initiative, or something. Vending dot in-vendor dot mysterious evil plan dot in-vendor. How come the vending machine is doing something called the Scorpion Initiative? Oh that's good, actually. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, well they were founded by Andrius and Horowitz. Day two of the Russian cyber attack, every vending machine emits scorpions. No one ever orders the scorpions. They tell you it's a good and low calorie source of protein, but no one's interested. And they don't care if they eat them in China. They'd rather have a pack of munchies or something. It would be ironic to have them blast the scorpions given that they did the winds of change. A simple window showing, this is from the press, a simple window showing you the

snacks inside apparently is too low tech. Instead, in vendors new era of vending machines use giant touch screens to inundate you with combo deals, promotions and AI powered product recommendations. Again, we are, so you don't just, you walk up to the thing and then it's just like, do you get a Yorkie or not? By the way, you can trust us with this information. Cool. I guess I'm, I'm also kind of confused here. Maybe this is like a real London vibe, but I can't tell you the last time I saw a fucking vending machine. Like I work on university campuses and you know what we,

we all have like our own university branded espresso stands and stuff like that where we sell things to the children. Like I don't know. It's like airports, train stations. Yeah but even in train stations that I'm in it's like no there's, are you going to M&S or are you going to you know. You're going to get a pasty. Yeah right. Thewall pastico imagine if they start facial recognition Maybe clock in my ass Before we move on to the off of this though, I did a mighty lass Sturdy meal of a deluxe sausage roll or a

sturdy a sturdy meal of a deluxe sausage roll or a Classic pasty so and she'll be surely wanting a cookie with it Got my ass so the the end of course the the all of this surveillance pen optic on right because this is this is off the back of a partnership with Another company called quivitia which again've got a bad case of Quividia. They say, we will be offering a unified, precise... That's what the vending machine told me. They say, we will be offering...

Yeah, that's how they're advertising to you. That's the problem with all these AI generated ads. This is just a guy who clearly wanted to claim he worked for Nvidia, picked the business name, was like, yeah, I work for Quividia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Quividia, we went to school with her. We can offer a unified, precise measurement for each of the campaigns run on our network and our partnership leading to a more efficient use

of retail media budgets. Means again, the purpose of the giant Panopticon, again, identify you importantly in many ways that are like particular to you, that are just being put up everywhere without anyone really being asked, is for the purposes of better marketing M&Ms. ALICE Yeah, but on the other hand, Quivideo Vending Panopticon has some fantastic articles and Tatler.

SEAN Yeah, that's right. RILEY Alright, I want to move on to ARK. The ARK newsletter that I've subscribed to, that I'm going to be sharing with you now. Now, as a reminder to listeners, ARK is a company that is the Magic Beans company, you know they're the ones who are like, RoboTaxis will be here in 2018, 19, first quarter 2020, third quarter 2022, latest time RoboTaxis will be there. This is the ARK website. So it's sort of the Avanti west coast of technology. Yes. I mean to be fair there's not really much need for taxis for robots. It's not enough. Don't you have to move the vending machines around that often?

Yeah exactly. What do you got, Asimo? He can walk, he doesn't mind.