HUMAN IN THE LOOP

Human in the Loop Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2022

 

NEWS

My work is included in the University of St. Andrew’s, UK, newly launched online Museum of Peace . The Museum exhibits an array of different approaches to peace in different themed ‘rooms’. You can see my exhibit in the Visualising Peace room, plus a couple of the other rooms.

I am thrilled that Otilia Meden, in her thoughtful essay "Cyber Peace and Artivism, with Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox" has connected my earlier work with my more recent paintings.  

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Autonomous Systems

As technological systems increasingly include autonomous functions, a plethora of questions about human work and agency arise. These questions relate to human labour and human decision making. 

With regards to weapon systems, autonomous functions within a system raise questions about a creeping attrition of human participation. This usurped participation could include activities such as, analysis of data, decisions about deployments of human and non-human warfighters, assessments of kill zones, identification of targets, and more. Autonomous functions enabled by AI and machine learning decrease delay, often caused by human beings taking time to think. Speed is increasingly viewed as a tactical and strategic edge, even a purveyor of weaponry, if not a weapon itself. I have a particular interest in speed, more specifically light-speed electromagnetic spectrum frequency-enabled connectivity and interconnectivity.

Two Paintings

The two paintings in this post, Human in the Loop and Threat, reflect upon the concepts of  'human in the loop' - 'human on the loop' - 'meaningful human control' - 'meaningless human control'. 

In Human in the Loop [above] binary code 'instructs' the word Human. This is followed by text "in the loop.". This is a reference to another recent painting Theatre of War: Law  which is a response to recent news about research into an AI legal assistant for in-combat military situations. The human being becomes an algorithm?

In Threat, binary code at the bottom of the painting 'instructs' the word HUMAN. The aerial view of what looks like a military air force base, seems to be viewed on a 'screen'. Perhaps this is drone footage? Does the code mean that a human being is monitoring the surveillance, identifying the threat, targeting the threat - or - does it mean a meaningless presence?

I use the word 'instruct' because code is essentially instructional. By painting code I attempt to make visible normally invisible instructional forces that drive our techno-world. Painting is a form of resistance, as it does not feed data back into the system. A digital photograph of a painting feeds data about the photo, not the actual process of creating the painting. 

Internet of Battlefield Things

Both paintings also indicate that interconnectivity via 'the Cloud' or the Internet of Battlefield Things [IoBT], enables interoperability across multiple domains. Another recent painting Theatre of War: Internet of Battlefield Things responds to this permutation of 'the Cloud'. 

 I have just listened to the proceedings of a very interesting and serious conference "The Kill Cloud: Networked Warfare, Drones and AI" hosted by The Disruption Network Lab, Berlin, March 2022. Sobering listening. It was a call-out to look beyond the drone [hradware], and to examine the system. This is exactly the focus of my PhD research, examining increasing military interest in the electromagnetic spectrum [EMS], as an enabler of technology, a type of fires, a manoeuvre space and a domain. Without reliable access to the EMS, connectivity, operability, interconnectivity, interoperability - at speed - could not occur. 

And, there's a lot more to write and think about, but I will leave this to you!

Cheers,

Kathryn

Threat Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2022

 

FAKE EYES: IN THE SKY

Fake Eyes-In-The-Sky Oil on linen 30 x 45 cm 2018

EYE IN THE SKY

An airborne drone is sometimes called an 'eye in the sky'. In fact, there is a movie called  Eye In The Sky . Starring Helen Mirren the movie presents various dilemmas associated with targeting and attack decision making by remote drone operators and other defence personnel. 

What sort of questions are posed by calling an unmanned air vehicle, which is remotely piloted and weaponised, an eye in the sky? Firstly there are questions about attributing the machine with animal, human or a non-human, abilities ie: seeing. Can a drone really see? Is imaging technology really representative of an eye, or a set of eyes? Is machine vision, in terms of autonomous reviewing of image data collected by a drone feed, another kind of seeing? What are the existential implications if we ascribe human abilities to increasingly autonomous machine systems? Do we inadvertently relinquish something?

I have previously written about the  the word 'vision' used in terms such as 'drone vision' and 'machine vision'. Vision, when associated with human vision, is not only about seeing, but also dreaming, imagining and visionary thinking. For example,. I 'see'pictures in my head when i read a book, even a non-fiction book! Can a drone dream, imagine or come up with some kind of visionary idea? The answer is no. Can machine vision, tasked with reviewing image data, imagine or dream? No, it scopes rather than sees. If anomalies are detected does machine vision then imagine outcome scenarios of what might happen, like a human would imagine? 

BLINDNESS

Ascribing human abilities of seeing and vision to the machine may, paradoxically, blind us! That poses the question, if a drone can see, is drone blindness also possible? This, I think, really penetrates the question, can a drone see, because blindness is about not seeing rather than being turned off or being dead. Human blindness does not exclude other kinds of vision - dreaming, imagining and visionary thinking. That a drone cannot dream, imagine or come up with visionary ideas indicates a kind of blindness that raises further questions about ascribing human abilities of sight and vision to the machine. 

There must be alternative words to describe a drone's imaging capabilities and machine vision capabilities - the one I have come up with is scoping. Scoping does not indicate abilities to imagine or dream, but it does indicate abilities to target and attack. 

Fake Eyes-In-The-Sky

In my painting Fake Eyes-In-The-Sky two fake eyes hover, each painted with small 'pixels'. The red and green colours indicate night scoping and infrared technologies. Drones are not 'eyes-in-the-sky, they are scope-in-the-sky! Each fake eyes' pupils are centred in a scope's cross hairs. These eye-drones are clearly scopes, camera and/or weapon, their signals aimed at the tree-of-life, a white beacon in the distance. 

That the tree provides perspective is indicative of hope. 

Fake Eyes-In-The-Sky is another dronescape, plus it is a cosmicscape. Apart from being an exploration of contemporary weaponised technology, it is also a landscape. 

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My last post was called Seeing Through the Fake Window

You might also like to read The Drone: Do Not Embody

Cheers,

Kathryn

PALE BLUE DOT - PLANET EARTH

Pale Blue Dot Oil on linen 120 x 160 cm 2014 Private Collection

I offer you a selection of paintings that depict a.......................................... 

pale blue dot - aka Earth. 

I am taking the descriptor 'pale blue dot', coined by Carl Sagan for the famous photograph Voyager 1 took as it left the solar system in February 1990. At Sagan's suggestion the spacecraft's camera was turned back towards Earth. Soon after, the camera was turned off in order to conserve power for the spacecraft's continuing interstellar journey.  You can read and listen to Carl Sagan's famous words describing the photograph, and the effect it had on him and many others HERE

A snippet from Sagan:

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

How poignant is - no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves?

In an era where emerging technologies pose existential risks, saving us from ourselves is a useful thought to ponder. In an era where weapons systems are increasingly interconnected across military and civilian arenas, and increasingly autonomous, saving us from ourselves takes on even more poignancy.  

Me in the studio working on Pale Blue Dot - helped by a glass a bubbly! 

Pale Blue Dot - AKA Earth Oil on canvas 90 x 100 cm 2017

Anomaly Detection no 2 Oil on linen 120 x 180 cm 2017

Detail of Anomaly Detection no 2

Rose Tinted Landing Oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm 2017

Have we accepted ubiquitous surveillance and always present potential targeting into our collective subconscious? I call it a 'landing' on our subconscious - a kind of insidious colonisation of imagination presented as a way to save ourselves! 

Launching the New Horizon oil on canvas 60 x 92 cm 2017

In Launching the New Horizon there is a pale blue dot, set amongst the array of other celestial dots. The 'new horizon' is created by the flat wings of the unmanned weaponised drone.

21st Century Cloud Fantasy Oil on canvas 67 x 76 cm 2017

 Australian Landscape Cutout Oil on linen 50 x 70 cm 2015

From a cosmic perspective it becomes apparent that Earth is our only home, at least for the foreseeable future. Concepts of nationhood, land ownership, borders, and sovereign power seem futile. If we all dug to the centre of the Earth, we'd all meet as one!

Planet $ oil on linen 30 x 30 cm 2011

Carl Sagan The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. 

Planet $ poses questions about how we 'value' our safe harbor, our home. 

Will the way we 'value' things help save us from ourselves? 

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Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com 

ROSE TINTED LANDING

Rose Tinted Landing oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm 2017

This small painting makes me smile. I think it 'speaks' volumes. 

Civilian/Military - Dual-Use

I've been researching airborne militarised drones for over two years now, and I detect an increasing dilemma between the enthusiasm for the civilian use of drone technology, and the use of drone technology by the military or other security or combatant forces. On the one hand research into drone technology to assist activities such as humanitarian efforts, agriculture, environmental issues, goods delivery, disaster relief and more, are greeted with positive, even exuberant responses. And, rightly so, because the positive outcomes include saving lives, improved time management, economic benefits, and more. On the other hand, weaponisable drone technology that can be used by military or security forces, and/or conscripted by insurgent or criminal entities, presents a future that seems generally less rosy. 

However, for some, developments in militarised drone technology paint a very rosy picture. This is due to outcomes such as increased tactical advantage, political points for not exposing home troops to their possible death in foreign wars, increased reach across land, air and sea domains [even space]. Additionally, proponents of airborne military drones argue that targeting is more precise, even surgical, and thus reduces the likelihood of civilian deaths. These arguments play out in debates around the increasingly autonomous nature of drone technology ie: the use of artificial intelligence in drone operative and decision making activities. Lethal autonomous weapon systems [LAWS], although debated for a few years, are currently gaining more critical attention against accelerating developments in artificial intelligence and drone technology - not just airborne, but also land-based, under sea and on the sea drone technology. 

Lethal Autonomous Weapons LAWS

The debates about LAWS are played out in a number of arenas - and - interestingly many of those who are cautious are scientists, including AI developers and roboticists. In 2015 the Future of Life Institute published Autonomous Weapons: An Open Letter from AI and Robotics Researchers and in 2017 An Open letter to the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. There are ongoing discussions at the UN about the definition of a lethal autonomous weapon system, and ensuing  policy responses. However, the accelerating nature of AI development places policy development and legal responses, in a race they cannot keep up with. And, a new arms race looms - if it is not already under way. Whilst some people call for a ban on LAWS development, others call for a moratorium, until definitions, protocols, guidelines etc are in place. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is one of the active and informed players in the debate about the development and use of LAWS. Another agitator in the debate is the International Committee for Robot Arms Control [ICRAC]. 

Interestingly, the recent UN Institute for Disarmament Research [UNIDIR] report, The Weaponisation of Increasingly Autonomous Technologies: Concerns, Characteristics and Definitional Approaches [download from UNIDIR Publications] points out that the dual-use nature of technology draws together research for civilian purposes, with research and outcomes of militarised technology. So, advances in drone technology and artificial intelligence for use in civilian situations, are likely to also impact on advances in militarised technologies. The lines between civilian/ military use are increasingly blurred, by corporate involvement in technological research - ie: companies developing, selling and servicing technologies that are utilised or utilisable by the military - or other kinds of security forces.   

Rose Tinted Landing

This painting 'speaks' to the complexity that surrounds dual-use military/civilian technology. On the one hand in civilian situations the positive outcomes of drone technology, coupled with autonomous systems such as identification, pattern recognition, anomaly detection and so on, is exciting. Yet, these same capabilities in a militarised or weaponised situation take on more dire possibilities. Conversely though, these capabilities are seen as highly desirable by those who seek tactical advantage and domain dominance. Additionally, the data gathered by civilian use drone technology ie: mapping, animal and human behaviour, etc, is potentially accessible by other entities - I'll let you think about what entities! 

Rose Tinted Landing questions how we human beings embrace technology - the pink drone, seemingly landing on a pink tarmac, demonstrates that technology, with its 21st century characteristics of accelerating complexity and fluidity, has landed on our collective consciousness. Are we metaphorically seeing contemporary technology through rose-tinted eyes/glasses - as the old saying goes? Or, is the painting pointing out that there is no such thing as a rose tinted future - it is all a ruse, a virtual reality, a subterfuge...?

Rose Tinted Landing is another dronescape, but it is also a cosmic landscape. It is part of an underlying quest of mine, to rethink notions of landscape in an era where technology's invisible signals mediate how we operate in our environments and respond to landscape. 

And, on that note, I will leave it to you to think more about - everything!

Other Drone Landing paintings are:

Launching the New Horizon  

Drone: Enduring Presence [Meta Landing]

Cheers,

Kathryn

DRONE: ENDURING PRESENCE (META LANDING)

Drone: Enduring Presence (Meta Landing) Oil on linen 30 x 40 cm 2017

Here is a painting of an airborne drone. It is armed with two guided missiles and four Hellfire missiles. Its wide-area electro-optical surveillance system is identified by the darker red spot under its nose. The drone's wheels are down, as if readying to land, or perhaps readying to take off. However, although there is an indication of a landing tarmac, its appearance is ambiguous. It presents as if it is an illuminated field, but one with a translucent, non-material appearance. It could be a number of things - a lit landing field, an indication of the drone's pervasive surveillance capabilities - or - even a symbol of pervasive threat.  

If it is an illuminated landing field, the drone appears to be landing in the sky. The landing field, therefore, connotes a kind of cosmic one. This implies an almost imperial prerogative over the sky. If the illuminated area under the drone indicates its pervasive surveillance capabilities, the empire building prerogative is made even more intentional. That the illumination wraps around the drone gives the appearance of an almost godly or at least, a celestial quality. Certainly, empire building seductions...However, presented this way, the drone is clearly a false god and a false star. In either case - a warning.

There is a lot to think about and say in this age of fast paced drone and autonomous systems development. Apart from the technical aspects, which are quite remarkable, there are contingent social, ethical and political ramifications, especially regarding weaponised technologies. If you believe that war is always inevitable, the continuing development of weapons' systems is also inevitable. Hand clapping stuff for weapons' manufacturers and neo-liberal market forces that reach into the future in ways that militarise imaginations. Hence the 'meta landing' idea presented in the title of Drone: Enduring Presence (Meta Landing). A 'meta landing' goes well beyond simply landing on a tarmac in a military base. It represents a landing into consciousness and the future.

I wonder what it would be like if we seriously posed questions that related to the idea that war is not inevitable. In the small chance that it is not inevitable lies a future for humanity that is radically different to the one driven by beliefs that war is inevitable. 

Cheers,

Kathryn