Through the looking glass
New tech can undoubtedly transform people’s lives, so is it AI or its creators that we should fear?
BBC/Open Mike Productions
- Caroline Frost
Add Chris McCausland: Seeing Into the Future to your watchlist
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Eighteen months ago, I sat in a packed conference room listening to the world’s richest man opine on many things. Treated like an all-seeing visionary not a businessman, Elon Musk was asked where he put the chance of an AI-related global disaster, what he termed “something terrible happening”. He replied: “10–20 per cent probability. The glass is 80-per-cent full. Look on the bright side.”
While we wrestle with the promised pros and threatened cons of the AI tsunami, a new documentary – Chris McCausland: Seeing into the Future – offers a welcome respite from this existential overload, with a thrilling portrait of the benefits AI can bring.
Never has one person been so perfectly positioned to present a show as here. Before the world of comedy called, McCausland – aka the man who saved Strictly – was a website developer with a degree in software engineering and, as he puts it, “a geek”. He was also born with a degenerative eye condition and has been blind since his mid-20s. He previously used a white stick and a guide dog, but didn’t get on with either. Now, aged 48, he has an iPhone offering accessibility tech that enables him to check train times, choose a T-shirt or buy a pint of milk, something he calls “a game changer in opening up the world and navigating the everyday”.
AI is building a bridge between blind people and the world
When he shares the exhausting burden of endless dependence on others and his hunger for all the access offered by AI innovation, his lightness of touch and jokey manner belie his profound wish to be “just like everybody else”, and we’re rooting for him from the start.
For his documentary, he travels to Silicon Valley, where – away from all the controversies of Facebook – Meta has developed a pair of AI-powered smart glasses. As soon as he puts them on, McCausland is given vivid descriptions of everything in front of him – it turns out he’s not interested in trees and lakes, so it’s off to shop for some vinyl.
He travels in a driverless cab – “for the first time ever I’ve been alone in a moving car”. It’s intensely affecting to witness his experiences, and impossible to disagree when he waxes lyrical about the convenience AI offers – “building a bridge between blind people and the rest of the world… it feels like we’re invited into the club.”
McCausland’s joy doesn’t mean we should ignore the politics, economics and questions of the bigger AI picture. We know that this multi-trillion-dollar industry is being spearheaded by tech entrepeneurs who are focused on profits, rather than making the world a better place. We know that current US politics has enabled a Wild West of innovation, with much softer levers of regulation and restraint than in previous administrations. And we know that one of Donald Trump’s big campaign donors, David Sacks, is heavily invested in this kind of tech and is also the White House AI and crypto tsar, making him the referee on a pitch where he’s also the centre forward. And we accept that there are as many doomsayers predicting the end is nigh as there are gurus promising us a golden age.
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The bigger questions about AI we’re not yet able to answer, or possibly work out even what to ask. For now, though, it’s possible to revel in McCausland’s exuberance for everything AI has to offer someone in his situation and, throughout this hour-long doc at least, follow Musk’s advice to look on the bright side.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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