Flat Eye presents a possible future which may be neither desirable nor avoidable.

To create this world and make it credible, MONKEY MOON took inspiration from the present. There is no lack of sources: online articles, social media videos, scientific journals and more. On the team's private chat, one observation came up again and again: ""when reality goes beyond fiction."" Things that may seem a long way off or even impossible in the game may in fact have already happened, and some of the game's narrative threads were directly inspired by these true stories.
As archivist for the project, my mission, toward the end of the development process, was to gather all of these articles to create this coherent bibliography. It provides a closer look at what inspired Flat Eye, of course, but also at our present--a time of such rapid, constant change that we don't even realize it's happening anymore.
The goal of this snapshot of the world is to place Flat Eye's major themes (artificial intelligence, the future of work, social change, etc.) in their context. The bibliography sorts articles into several different categories (with frequent overlaps) and provides a summary for each. If you're only after the links and references, you'll find it all at the bottom of the page.

September 2022. The archivist.

Artificial intelligence, or rather machine learning (because that's what we're really talking about: programs that digest huge amounts of data--texts, images, audio and video--qualified in turn by metadata, to establish logical ties between them) is nothing new. It's an old concept. What has changed over the course of Flat Eye's development is the democratization of its use. The tools have been made public, and are increasingly being used in real-life conditions, but users don't always consider the innate limits of AI beforehand.

An AI Epidemiologist Sent the First Warnings of the Wuhan Virus

Published on January 25 2020

Seen by Flat Eye team on January 28 2020

{Content in English}

An epidemiologist AI named BlueDot developed by a Canadian start-up predicted the emergence of Covid-19 10 days before the World Health Organization began talking about the disease.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-epidemiologist-wuhan-public-health-warnings/

[AI-0] See reference details

How India’s data labellers are powering the global AI race

Published on March 21 2019

Seen by Flat Eye team on February 10 2020

{Content in English}

This article explores data labeling companies in India, where employees label image after image to train autonomous vehicle AIs. This manual task which underpins all Artificial Intelligence could itself be automated in time.

https://archive.factordaily.com/indian-data-labellers-powering-the-global-ai-race/

[AI-3] See reference details

Une intelligence artificielle a conçu un antibiotique surpuissant : c’est une première

Published on February 21 2020

Seen by Flat Eye team on February 22 2020

{Content in French}

An AI used in an MIT lab developed powerful antibiotic halicin (an homage to HAL, the AI in 2001: A Space Odyssey). When tested on mice and ex vivo human cells it effectively killed many antibiotic resistant pathogens including the one responsible for tuberculosis.

https://www.numerama.com/sciences/607147-une-intelligence-artificielle-a-concu-un-antibiotique-surpuissant-cest-une-premiere.html

[AI-4] See reference details

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

Published on February 20 2018

Seen by Flat Eye team on September 20 2020

{Content in English}

Book by Safiya Umoja Noble on the racial and gender biases of search engines and how that negatively impacts Black women in particular. The dominant position of these tools spread and reinforce these biases.

https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1479837245/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_55XzFb68S4YNC

[AI-8] See reference details

Microsoft Files Patent to Create Chatbots That Imitate Dead People

Published on January 21 2021

Seen by Flat Eye team on January 22 2021

{Content in English}

Microsoft filed a patent to create chatbots able to imitate dead people. All you have to do is feed the AI voice recordings, images and social media interactions.

https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-chatbot-patent-imitate-dead-people-ai?sf136584956=1

Note from the archivist: Toward the end of Flat Eye's development, Amazon announced a similar feature for devices with Alexa.

[AI-9] See reference details

Spotify has a patent for personality tracking technology – and it’s pretty creepy stuff

Published on October 07 2020

Seen by Flat Eye team on March 11 2021

{Content in English}

Analysis of a patent filed by Spotify designed to determine a listener's personality traits from what they listen to and the context in which they listen to specific tracks. Spotify then aims to develop a listener profile from the traits observed.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-has-a-patent-for-personality-tracking-technology-and-its-pretty-creepy/

Note from the archivist: From the Monkey Moon forum: "It would be 'fun' if the AI assigned a personality type to players at the end of the game."

[AI-10] See reference details

Daniel Kahneman: ‘Clearly AI is going to win. How people are going to adjust is a fascinating problem’ / 'I’ll say it again. AI IS people. Just people. All the way down. For the foreseeable future. So if you frame it as a war that AI wins, you’re saying that some people will win that war against other people. Don’t pretend the machines are fighting anyone.'

Published on May 16 2021

Seen by Flat Eye team on May 17 2021

{Content in English}

Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, whose research focuses on the decision-making process, talks about people's lack of realiability and predictability. He expects that artificial intelligences will make decisions in many sectors in the future, behaving more fairly than than humans.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/16/daniel-kahneman-clearly-ai-is-going-to-win-how-people-are-going-to-adjust-is-a-fascinating-problem-thinking-fast-and-slow

[AI-12] See reference details

Talking to Animals: Using AI to Decode the Language of Whales

Published on May 31 2021

Seen by Flat Eye team on June 01 2021

{Content in English}

A presentation of the Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI) and its volunteers who are fascinated by whales' intelligence, language and dialects. CETI hopes to accumlate enough data to have it analyzed by programs to try to understand whalespeak.

https://interestingengineering.com/talking-to-animals-with-ai-decoding-whale-language

[AI-13] See reference details

Alphabet is launching a company that uses AI for drug discovery

Published on November 04 2021

Seen by Flat Eye team on November 05 2021

{Content in English}

Google's parent company, Alphabet, is investing in Demis Hassabis's vision for artificial intelligence. Hassabis, who already heads up DeepMind, the Alphabet subsidiary that uses AI to extrapolate protein structures, will now also run Isomorphic Laboratories. This new Alphabet subsidiary will use AI to develop new medicines by predicting how the body will react.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/4/22763535/google-alphabet-drug-discovery-deepmind-ai?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

Note from the archivist: Demis Hassabis started his career as a video game developer, working most notably on the games Theme Park and Evil Genius. As I write this, DeepMind has just published a database containing the structure of almost every known protein.

[AI-14] See reference details

Life 3.0

Published on August 23 2017

Seen by Flat Eye team on January 12 2022

{Content in English}

In this 2017 book, Max Tegmark considers the present and future impacts of artificial intelligence on humanity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_3.0

[AI-17] See reference details

References