Will You Hate Smart Glasses? Part 2
A possible future with much less privacy.
“What Can Smart Glasses Do?”
Meta and Ray-Ban made smart glasses. These glasses have small cameras, speakers, and a microphone. People can take photos, make videos, listen to music, and talk to Meta’s AI assistant. An assistant is someone, or something, whose job it is to help someone who has a more important job. The glasses need a phone app to work.
My assistant robot does a lot of work for me. Now it says it wants free maintenance and oil for the next 35 years!
“How Do They Work?”
To take a photo or video, people press a button. A small light turns on to show the camera is working. If someone covers the light, the AI assistant tells them to uncover it. When you uncover something, you take away what is over the top of it. Some people think the light is too small, and they worry about privacy.
When Carla finished uncovering the dirt from the bones she accidentally discovered, she realized it was bigger than a bus.
“Meta Sells Your Image?”
Meta is a big company that makes money from ads. People worry about how Meta uses their photos. The glasses send photos to Meta’s cloud. Meta says AI looks at the photos and helps make Meta’s products better. A product is something made by people or machines to be sold for money. But some people are not happy about this.
Timmy’s new product, a time machine, was a huge success - yesterday.
“People Are Worried”
In Canada, people can take photos of other people in public, but not in private places. If a place is private, it is away from other people, or people are not allowed to go or see into it. Meta asks users to follow some rules. They should tell people before using the camera and turn it off in places like hospitals or bathrooms. But some people think this is not enough.
There’s a luxury hotel, that’s so private, it’s in space and you need a shuttle to get there.
“Practice For The Rest Of Us?”
In China, police use smart glasses with facial recognition. When you recognize someone or something you’re saying that you know a person or you know a thing. These glasses help find criminals but also make people worried about human rights. Some experts say this technology helps security, but others say it could be used unfairly.
Roman walked in the door and he knew he was in big trouble because he could not recognize his own mother’s face.
“Bonus: Today’s Idiom”
For my more advanced readers, tell me what you think in the comments below. I want you to imagine that these smart glasses become available to everybody like smartphones. People can scan your face and “rat you out”: what’s your name, where you live, who you live with, who are your friends, where you work or go to school. Anybody with this technology can now show up at your job, where you food shop or even your house! Imagine a world where strangers will say, “Hi Alice” or “Hi Alex” because your face can tell them almost everything about you. It would be an AI nightmare.
