In memory of our late colleague and Film Studies founder Professor Franco Tonelli, the Department of Film and Media Studies awarded two prizes for the best undergraduate essays in the following two categories: film studies, or television and/or digital media studies. These awards recognize the scholarship and research of Film and Media Studies students.
This year’s recipient of the Tonelli Award in Media Studies is Kim Zamora, for her essay, “Hierarchy of Control”. We were lucky enough to sit down with Kim, who talked to us about her inspiration for this essay.
Abstract: Waymo is a self-driving car with 24/7 operations. Customers are able to experience services akin to an Uber or Lyft without the need for a driver, and are promised a safe, private, and quiet ride, while being sustainable. However, similar to Aneesh Chaganty’s shot compositions in Searching (2018), privacy, safety, and sustainability are illusionary. The use of viewing the film through various devices mimics the intrusion that Waymo obstructs with distractionary astonishment of their product. As Waymo expands, they continue to uphold a hierarchy of artificial intelligence over human minds. The autonomous vehicle, while a pinnacle of awe, contributes and participates in unethical workspaces, exploiting foreign workers, and environmental damage.
Q: What sparked your interest in this topic?
A: Thanks to Professor Crano’s course, I felt very immersed with the proliferation of AI and its effects on the world, education, and its integration in society. With this specific prompt, it drove me and the class to look deeper into how AI is quickly becoming naturalized and training us to readily accept it. It is such an interesting topic and I feel that these are the types of discussions we need to be having these days. AI has become a tool that is so easily accessible, but there is also the line of complete dependency that I feel is often being crossed and overlooked.
As I developed my paper, I felt immediately drawn to Waymo. Personally coming from San Francisco, they’ve become this new, advanced technology that has got everyone in awe–and with the encouragement to question these objects, I felt almost interrogative! In my experience, I have never ridden in a Waymo because the idea of being in a car that drives itself does not feel safe. There is always a source to how a vehicle such as Waymo moves, and that source just so happens to be a mix of AI and human operatives, which was both interesting and disheartening to learn about because of the methods used to function it.
Q: What was the most rewarding aspect of your research?
The most rewarding aspect of my research was definitely becoming more informed about how damaging AI is not only to our minds, but to our environment and the world. Waymo actually relies heavily on AI to make their vehicles autonomous. While I knew that AI was a tool to be wary and skeptical of, the research on the power necessary to function and train its AI, the labor it obscures, and environmental damages provided a deeper context into the self-driving vehicle. It was definitely a prominent shift in perspective that only solidified and expanded the extent of why we should be careful with this device.