Welcome to my smart crib

Written By Isabelle Winkler

Are we ever more intimate than when we step inside our front door? Protecting us from the hustle of modern life, the four walls of a home provide us with the space to drop our guard and let loose our most vulnerable selves. But what happens when the walls have ears?

Having a house to return to every night is a privilege, and the concept of the modern home has long been capitalised on. Philosopher Abraham Maslow presents a hierarchy of needs*, where he introduces shelter as a foundational “deficiency need”. Once it is fulfilled, the status of a home can be elevated, and the space turns into a display of gadgets aimed at helping us achieve needs higher up in the hierarchy. These goals he deems “growth needs” are non-material, such as psychological fulfilment, ego and self-actualisation. In order to develop as people, our primal physical needs, including shelter and safety, must first be met.

*Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs: A motivational theory in psychology, where our needs as humans are split into five levels, with our most basic at the bottom and more complex at the top. In order to achieve the needs in the higher levels, the foundations must first be satisfied.

If we are privileged, we may concentrate on renovating and redecorating our homes into consumerist havens, to best meet our higher, intellectual needs, including affinities for aesthetics. The endless slew of optional add-ons to turn our dens into dream houses means that the market for a beautiful home has exploded with accessories to help us get there. 

It’s then only natural that we strive to optimise our spaces, helped along by ads selling us things we have become convinced we need. The vast majority of us are capable of turning on a light, yet the rise of The Clapper* in the 90s revolutionised the way we think about home automation. Why not take the path of least resistance?

*The Clapper: A device that introduced millions of people to the idea of simple home automation, by turning electrical devices on and off in response to a sound.

“Alexa, I’m home.” Enter the world of smart home technology. 

As we’ve spent the last two years hidden away in home-office, the smart home industry has bloomed. Thanks to The Internet Of Things*, our devices are turning on, tuning in and dropping... messages to each other? We’ve arrived at a future where our fridge can tell our watch that we’ve run out of milk; it’s time to go grocery shopping.

*The Internet Of Things: A network made up of devices that can be connected to the Internet, allowing communication between each other.

A pandemic-induced priority on health has also seen wellness technology find its place inside the modern home. Air quality can be improved through filtration systems. Thermostats can regulate climate. Touchless doorbells* allow our guests to announce their arrival without contaminating us with their germs. Smart toilets allow us to analyse our own (or rather, our microbes).

*Touchless Doorbells: A doorbell that chimes once a camera detects a person at the door. By avoiding touch, the device reduces health risks assosciated with spreading germs.

But just because something is synced to the cloud, doesn’t mean it should be. Back in 2013, a loophole in the Japanese smart toilet* My Satis was discovered, allowing hackers to potentially manipulate its controls and spray its users constantly with water each time they sat down. Just as iPhones scan our faces for recognition, some AI** toilets can even discern between individuals by photographing your bare bottom as you sit down. Say cheese!

*Smart Toilets: Toilets that contain technology to monitor for signs of disease by analysing our waste, providing data on the health and composition of our microbiome.

Rooming with Big Tech

The potential for disaster goes beyond a toilet-water soaking, with our data being collected and commodified, and having seemingly no idea exactly how much Alexa and Google Home actually listen in on us. In 2019, it was revealed that employees at Amazon worked in shifts at Amazon to listen to Alexa recordings, training the machine to get smarter. This included digging through the files for specific words, sometimes overhearing private moments - like a woman singing or a child crying, and even sharing files in private chat groups just for laughs. After requesting data from Amazon, a reporter at Reuters unveiled the company had collected over 90,000 recordings from their family between December 2017 and June 2021. These breaches of home security leave big question marks in the air for the future of smart home technology, balancing how we can engage with their benefits without letting Jeff Bezos walk straight through our front door. 

The privacy dilemma deepens further with off-brand household items plugged into the web. Once safely settled inside our four walls, they become gateways for cyberhackers to sit with us in our living rooms. To upgrade our home lives, we must either get into bed with brands like Apple, Amazon and Google, who profit off our data, each carrying their own baggage of documented privacy breaches; or we choose smaller, lesser-known brands, laden with more vulnerable software that leaves us exposed to criminal hackers.

Ethically, the pervasion of our intimate spaces by Artificial Intelligence (AI)* can interfere with a healthy mind-body connection in the pursuit of perfection. Ironically, we may shoot ourselves in the foot on our hunt for wellness, by obsessively tracking all biometrics** available to us. Heart rate monitors, fertility cycles, calorie counters, step counters, and sleeping debt trackers can all swiftly lead to obsessive behaviour and interfere by regulating our behaviour in accordance with our phones, rather than intuition. Do your 10,000 steps really count if they aren’t on your health app?

*Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computer and machine programs engineered to  mimic human problem-solving and decision-making patterns.

**Biometrics: The measurement and analysis of human characteristics relating to our physical features and behaviour.

Europe’s rulebook for AI

In April 2021, the European Commission submitted a proposal for an Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), revealing a new framework for tackling issues of ethics around AI. Given how quickly AI technology moves, these privacy concerns are increasingly difficult for policy-makers to navigate. However, working within the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the act puts individual citizens’ data protection at the forefront of decision-making, whilst still encouraging emerging technologies. According to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS)***, “the AIA is one of the most influential regulatory steps taken so far internationally. On the whole, it is a good starting point to ensure that the development of AI in the EU is ethically sound, legally acceptable, socially equitable, and environmentally sustainable, with a vision of AI that seeks to support the economy, society, and the environment.” Whilst it’s still unclear how this will operate in reality, and also doesn’t specifically implicate Big Tech, the sentiment is a step in the right direction, laying the groundwork for protection of privacy without compromising the benefits AI can offer to European society.

*Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA): A proposed European law on the regulation of artificial intelligence within the EU.

**General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): A privacy and security law passed by the EU to impose obligations onto orgnisations anywhere in the world, so long as they target or collect data related to people in the EU.

***European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS): The EU’s independent data protection authority.

If we think of ourselves and our devices as co-habitants of smart homes, we can begin to unpack our relationship with technology, and how it permeates our spaces, bodies and behaviours. Returning to Maszlo’s hierarchy, we could consider the advantages of home automation, so long as it fulfils one of our deficiency needs. It’s up to the individual to classify their own needs, as they will vary in degree for everyone. Voice activated home assistants may fill the shoes of a deficiency need when providing relief to disabled and elderly people requiring assisted living, removing care duties from relatives and even become like companions. However, if their purpose is to push a consumerist-driven need higher up the hierarchy, or even threaten personal growth by warping our sense of self, then I will turn all the lights off and pretend I’m not home when Alexa comes knocking.

Bibliography:

Further readings:

Isabelle Winkler

Isabelle is a writer and content creative based in Berlin. Since graduating from The University Of Melbourne with a degree in Media & Communications, she has been interested in shaping positive social change through cultural activism. 

Previous

Er holt mich schon nicht ein
Next

To each their own roof