Today's Infocult headline comes from the normally staid Washington Post:
Scientists are teaching drones to hunt down human screams
The nightmarish idea is actually based on a very humane design, aimed at bringing drone help to people in emergency.
[E]ngineers at Germany’s Fraunhofer FKIE institute... built a drone prototype designed to find people by detecting human screams and listening for other signs of distress...
[Engineer] Varela says the gadget would be ideal for post-disaster scenarios, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires. They could hover over an area that rescue crews have difficulty getting to and pinpoint where people may be trapped.
The WaPo article does embrace the Gothic aspect:
If someone created a flying machine capable of tracking you down by listening for your voice, you might be creeped out...
it’s easy to imagine human-seeking drones in a sci-fi horror movie...
The author also describes a splendid Infocult scene:
Engineers at FKIE took those situations into account when building out their concept drone. They first needed a database of “impulsive” human noises to train the drone against.
They recorded themselves screaming, tapping and creating other noises that might be a sign of people in trouble. Then, they analyzed each sound frequency to find common “signatures” and used those to train artificial intelligence software.
This gives us two lessons. First, every benign technology contains the possibility of horror. Second, we continue to haunt every technology we make.
(thanks to Steven Kaye)
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