2 THE WICKED QUEEN'S SMART MIRROR

Once upon a time, there was a tale about artificial intelligence called "Snow White." In the story, the Wicked Queen has a smart mirror. When activated with the command "Mirror, mirror," an embedded voice assistant tells the Queen whether she is the &#...

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Published inAgainst Reduction
Main Authors Arista, Noelani, Costanza-Chock, Sasha, Ghazavi, Vafa, Kite, Suzanne, Klusmeier, Cathryn, Lewis, Jason Edward, Pechawis, Archer, Sawyer, Jaclyn, Zhang, Gary Zhexi, Zhang, Snoweria
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published MIT Press 2021
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Summary:Once upon a time, there was a tale about artificial intelligence called "Snow White." In the story, the Wicked Queen has a smart mirror. When activated with the command "Mirror, mirror," an embedded voice assistant tells the Queen whether she is the "fairest of them all." Of course, today's technology renders engineering of such a mirror feasible with little effort. It would have a camera, connections to other smart mirrors in the kingdom, and a metric to evaluate the Wicked Queen's appearance against that of other users. This gadget might use a machine learning algorithm with training sets derived from People magazine's Most Beautiful list, or it could be based on a series of upvotes and downvotes. However, the apprehension with this contemporary version of the famous Grimm fairy tale as outlined is not its technical feasibility. Rather, the story reflects outdated values within a modernizing society. A truly smart mirror would tell the Wicked Queen that her obsession with triumphing using a singular beauty standard, one that prizes pale skin and youth, is misguided, reductive, and futile. "While we are on the topic though," the mirror would say, "here are seven products to brighten your skin!"