Sci-Fi Tech

Welcome to the 43rd edition of Safe For Work. Some safety news, new podcast episode, advancement in AI and computer vision, science fiction from Matt Cantor imagining a Thanksgiving conversation many years from now, and a new SFW Film adaptation.

In Safety News

• A new report shows that half of workplace harm goes unreported.

• Yes, the end of the year is near, so the 2025 prediction articles are starting to roll out. OSHA compliance in 2025.

Safe For Work Podcast

Episode 5 is available discussing safety culture and a new model proposed to understand occupational risk dynamics .

AI, Computer Vision and Safety

Conception

Matt Cantor

“It shouldn’t take more than an hour,” I promised my mother. “These things are usually quick-- thirty minutes once I hit the right bit of inspiration-- and when I’ve sat down to think about it, like I’m just now going to sit down and think about it, it doesn’t take me more than thirty minutes before that to get inspired.”

“Well, the roast is coming out in an hour, which means you will be sitting at the table in an hour with the rest of us,” my mother told me, matter of fact. “If your little project--”

“--my ad pitch--”

“If your ad pitch is done by then, all the better.”

She turned and vanished into the kitchen like a token into a retro arcade-machine. I sat back on the couch with my laptop, and I put my brain to something you might call work.

“‘Machines… ten-thousand times faster than the fastest human…’”

I hadn’t been the one to pick the theme. I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do with the theme. What kind of a theme was “machines”?

What kind of idiot was I for trying to tackle it like this?

“‘Machines…’” I murmured to myself in my best under-the-breath ad-voice. “‘Ten-thousand times faster than the fastest human…’”

Hadn’t they been ten-thousand times faster than the fastest human last year, too?

And for that matter, weren’t our competitor’s assembly-line machines also ten-thousand times faster than the fastest human, too?

“‘Ten-thousand times faster than the fastest human at doing the exact wrong bumf--’”

“Dad!” called my mom from the kitchen. “Watch it! Morris and little Nebby will be here soon. I don’t want her picking up that kind of language!”

“Peh!” he said back to her, in that way that he said it. “Peh! Here, I’ll tell you about machines, let me tell you about machines. I ever give you the story of how your mother was conceived?”

“DAD!!”

“Peh! Fine, then, you’re right, I’ll wait for Morris and Nebisco to show up and then I’ll tell this story-- wouldn’t want either of them to miss it!”

My mother didn’t have anything to say back to that.

It was so much like something from an old movie, by grandfather in his rocking chair, me on the couch, listening to some story from a time when there had been such a thing as snow.

“Here,” he said, “here. There was a boy and a girl, yes?”

“Yes,” I nodded to him.

“You don’t need to agree with me. There was a boy and a girl, and they weren’t so much younger than you. The boy, he was just twenty-two-- can you imagine that, twenty-two years old, and here you are at twenty-three and you don’t even--”

“Dad, it’s perfectly normal for Kevin not to have a girlfriend yet. I didn’t even meet Daniel until I was twenty-eight. You’re perfectly normal, Kevin!”

Of all the things I’d ever wanted to hear called out from the kitchen, “You’re perfectly normal, Kevin” had never been on the list. And of course I didn’t correct her about Elsie. I wasn’t ready to talk about Elsie yet. Things were just getting starting with Elsie. I didn’t want to jinx anything.

“Well, anyways, back in my day--”

“Back in your day, dad?”

“Back in my day, we didn’t have all this fancy junk that you have now. Smart-Skin, Trellams-- you know, when I was your age, and I wanted to talk to a girl, I had to take out a phone or laptop and actually call her and talk to her-- can you believe that? But now… well…”

My grandfather shook his head as I tried to remember what the start of this conversation had been about-- “You called grandma?”

“No, no, shush, I’m telling the story. Boy and a girl-- and the boy was even renting an apartment, and he had his own car-- not one of these self-driving nonsense machines, a real proper car that you could really properly drive yourself. Certainly, you had all sorts of ‘safety features’-- those were the big thing, everyone was trying to sell you on the safety features. Every car had them. Autobraking front-cameras, rear-collision avoidance, all of it! You know, it was so irritating, really, you’d be taking a left at an intersection-- imagine that, Kevin, actually making your own turns, yeah?-- you’d be taking a left at an intersection, and you’d have plenty of time, plenty of space from the oncoming cars, you’re the driver, you know what’s best-- but no, no, all the ‘safety features’ get all in a snit about it, and what do they do? They scan ahead of your car to make sure there’s nothing to hit, and then when there’s nothing they go ‘hurry hurry hurry!’ and they pump the gas and vroom!-- you’re roaring through the turn that would have been just fine, and your head goes smack on the headrest and you let go of the steering wheel and start veering towards a parked car, and now all the ‘safety features’ are screaming about that and on and on and on… it’s just not right, you know? A person should be in charge of a machine, simple as that… and I’ll tell you--”

This went on for another five minutes. This and that. That and this. I’ve always loved my grandfather. His stories?-- I’ve always loved just listening to him speak, more than anything he was saying. Get what you can, while you can. Get what you can, while you can. I heard all of it and hardly listened to any of it, but it would all come seeping back in, someday, from somewhere deep in my skull, and wouldn’t that just be a wonderful thing? Thirteen years with my own father, and only for the last few of those had I ever been anything close to actually being able to listen to him-- but all of the things that I’d heard… get what you can, while you can. Nevermind that the roast was still coming-- and my older brother, too. Nevermind that I hadn’t even started on my ad-pitch. Get what you can, while you can.

“Do you kids still do that?” my grandfather asked me. “Take a girl in your car up to ‘Makeout Point’ and--”

“Dad!”

“Oh, hush, Vanessa, we’re all adults here-- in the legal sense anyways… I’ll tell you when I was young, ‘Makeout Point’ was the place to be.”

I thought about it for a moment, tracing the words through my head-- “...do you mean that section of woodsy cliff overlooking the I-97? You have to go up through--”

“Yes, yes! Exactly!”-- if my grandfather could have hopped up and down with excitement, he would have, but the best he could give was a sort of upwards full-body rocking. “Good, not everything has been lost and forgotten! I’ll tell you when I was young, oh, that cliff-- we made a lot of memories on that cliff, me and my friends…”

He paused a moment, glanced a moment towards the kitchen, whatever was going on in there-- something was whistling, something was ticking, something was dinging, something was humming-- and then he leaned in a little lean towards me, with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye.

“We made a lot of people up on that cliff.”

I rolled my eyes. What else was I supposed to do? I was going to spend the rest of my life remembering him say that, and remembering the look on his face as he said that, and remembering the slightly cracked bit of ceiling near the lightbulb that my gaze passed over while rolling my eyes after he’d said that.

“So, a boy and a girl take their nice fancy car with all its safety features, and they go to spend the night together at ‘Makeout Point’. The boy drives the girl along the I-97 until they hit Exit 15, and then from the off-ramp at Exit 15, they turn onto that little dirt path, and then up through the woods they go, up and up and up-- and the safety features are freaking out the whole time-- they don’t like the trees, they don’t like the narrow road, it’s a battle and a half to get them to let the boy drive the car up. They’re always trying to speed up or slow down or stop or swerve-- but hey, the boy is determined! And eventually, he pulls it off. All the way up to ‘Makeout Point’-- have you ever been there?”

“Well, I--”

“It was a rhetorical device Kevin, obviously you’ve never been there-- but that’s alright, I’ll tell you how it works. You drive up to the edge of the cliff, and what you do is you drive along the edge, past all the other cars that have already parked, until you find a good spot for yourself, and then you pull in nose-first and park and there you are and off you go-- simpler times, right? Better times! Well, this particularly lovely Winter evening-- a little chilly, but particularly lovely-- the boy and the girl happened to be the first to arrive! So the very first spot at ‘Makeout Point’ was theirs for the taking. Straight off the dirt path! Sure, they could have moved along a bit, picked somewhere else, but why wait? You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. So they pulled up nice and careful, shifted into park, and left it at that. Kept the motor running-- the heat, of course, because it was a chilly Winter evening, lovely as it was. And they… well, they started about their business.”

“...and that was how mom was--”

“Peh!” said my grandfather, in that way that he said it. “Peh! Is that really who you think I am? The sort of man who’d let my proper control of a proper motor vehicle be wrestled away by a suite of goshdanged so-called ‘safety features’? Peh! No, no, I was a proper American man-- still am, and when I took your grandmother up to ‘Makeout Point’ that night, I did it in a car without single gabnicked camera or auto-whatever-- you understand me? Muscle and metal-- brains and brakelines, you understand me? Your grandmother and I… oh, we were wild, Kevin-- wild!!!-- do you even know what that word means? Your grandmother especially. She was a real firecracker! A fireball! A fire!-- that’s what she was, the woman was burning-- burning for me, of course-- and even on the drive up the little dirt path, she couldn’t keep her hands off of me.”

“...every time he tells this story…” grumbled my mother from the kitchen.

“And me? Well, maybe I find myself getting a little distracted by those hands that she can’t keep to herself. A man is going to have a reaction, Kevin-- maybe one day you’ll learn that, we’ll all pray. Men and reactions. So maybe I’m a little distracted. Not unsafe, mind you, I know how to drive a car, I know how to keep in control of things, but I’m coming up to the edge of the dirt path a little more quickly than I otherwise might-- still plenty of time to brake, and I realize it right away, I’m already reacting, and everything is going to be fine, I’m not even worried-- but that other car, with the boy and the girl in it-- remember them?-- that other car with it’s ‘safety features’, well the rear-facing cameras are having a fit!! Here comes this classic V-8 gorgeous, racing up the hill right towards the bumper, and the whole car is having a fit! What to do? There’s going to be an accident, what to do!? Lucky enough, the front-facing cameras are measuring out in front of the car, and they aren’t seeing anything at all. No traffic, no obstacles to crash into. Clear path ahead. So the system acts quickly to avoid the fender-bender-- shifts the car into park and revs it straight onwards, away from me and my V-8-- straight off the cliff and into the air!!”

At this, my grandfather stopped and lost himself in a fit of half-hacking laughter, for three, five, nine minutes, he couldn’t quite gather himself-- besides brief glimpses of normal breathing where he tried to show me with his hands what it had looked like, watching that other car go pitching forward over the edge so confidently-- and it didn’t look like anything at all, what he was doing, but to his eyes it was enough to start the laughter all over again until his eyes were red and his voice was hoarse.

“Wait a minute…” I murmured. “You were saying… this story… this was the story of how mom was…”

“You’re darned right, that’s the story! What a magical night! And me and your grandmother got ourselves one magical daughter out of it!”

“But that means…”-- I blinked once or twice, trying to find some other understanding. “...that other couple, the boy and the girl, they…”

“Died. Most certainly. Not much any of those ‘safety features’ coulda done about a two-hundred foot drop!”

“So they died, but you and grandma… you still…”

“Right in their same spot, too. It was the best spot, really-- and I’ll tell you why, because everyone else who wanted to use ‘Makeout Point’ had to drive on past you to get to one of the other spots, and you’re grandmother and I… oh, we were a high bar to clear!”

“Grandpa, that’s horrifying.”

“Oh, hush. You gotta do what you gotta do. People nowadays, you’re just too soft!”

The doorbell rings. Morris and Nebby have just arrived.

From the kitchen “Ah! Perfect timing! Roast is on!”

SFW Films presents: The System

In a world where an omniscient AI controls every aspect of workplace safety and efficiency, employees are suddenly terminated based on seemingly trivial actions, leading one worker to uncover the terrifying extent of the system's control and its potential to manipulate their lives. Adapted from the short story in issue 33.

See you next week as we consider the next generation of electrical engineering.

Stay safe.