AI Passport Controls, Robot Floor Polishers, Etc.: Orwell’s Nightmare in the Sharjah Airport

What I have seen strikes me as equal parts Brave New World and 1984, with a dash of Fahrenheit 451, and a light sprinkling of Lord of the Flies.

In the Sharjah, UAE airport, in line for a routine terrorist screening, a sea of faces is buried in the blue lights of their phones — nary do they look up but for the briefest of moments. Whatever it is on those screens has captured their full attention.

Related: Chinese Communist Party Literally Names Its Domestic Surveillance Program 'Skynet' 

The automated passport scanner — there are no actual human airport employees within earshot, and even the ones who are remotely close, like the security professional who was supposed to be checking luggage on the x-ray machine for bombs but was instead watching a soccer game on a tablet, are barely there, mentally — orders me to place my document on the scanner.

I obey, it does its thing, then a gate opens and it orders me through. There, the swinging doors shut behind me and I find myself before another gate — trapped like cattle between the two. At this second gate, the disembodied female voice orders me to look up at the camera, which scans my face to ensure I’m not a terrorist, or some other sort of undesirable as determined by some bureaucrat that may or may not even be human at this point.

I pass the test — which, given what I do for a living and the things I say in public, I don’t take for granted — and the gate opens. The AI lady voice ushers me on my way.

Via RS Web Solutions (emphasis added):

“Dubai International Airport… employs an 80-camera system to scan visitors’ faces and irises, permitting pre-checked passengers to authenticate their identification in seconds without showing passports or other documentation.

Since then, the system has grown to include more than 120 smart gates located across the airport. Similar technology has been adopted at numerous airports in the United States and abroad, providing travelers with an alternative to the cumbersome security processes that have come to define contemporary international travel…

The system has improved and been built for additional characteristics, such as current attempts to algorithmically detect tourists who are infected with the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 yet have no symptoms…

Smart ID Engine is a complete AI-based solution for automatic ID scanning, document verification, and data internal consistency of over 1810 varieties of IDs from 210 issuers worldwide, which is put at electronic gates, and passport control delays may become a distant memory.”

Related: TSA Rolls Out 'Voluntary' Face Scans at Over a Dozen American Airports

The inoffensive and matronly British female narrator below explains the process from start to finish — sure to emphasize at numerous turns the massive convenience factor, which is obviously how they sell these programs to the public (not that selling it really matters much; most of the lobotomized NPCs will comply with whatever reflexively).

I am now, with all due gratitude for my robot overlord for having granted me access, in the terminal.

A robot floor polisher hums along — steered by, evidently, nothing.

Any and all tasks previously performed by humans in this facility have been eliminated. More jobs are surely on the chopping blocks. AI will inevitably be piloting the airplanes soon.

Nonstop ads blare from enormous screens strategically placed everywhere.

Once on the ground, at the condo I booked online, here in Bangkok, the errand boy who handles things for the farang clientele meets us and informs us he needs us to come downstairs with him, passports in hand, for another face scanning, apparently on the order of the government.

Rules are rules.

With our likenesses registered in the system, the building now unlocks for entry by scanning our faces. We are granted permission to ride the elevator by scanning our faces. We get into the gym or the pool area by… well, you get it.

My wife asks if there is a water vendor anywhere nearby. I should have guessed how that would work out, but I had held out some modicum of hope there was some grandma with a tiny shop out back exchanging water for cash.

There’s not; what there is is a water bottle dispenser machine that requires you to scan a QR code, enter your bank account or app information, and pay digitally. You can then take what you paid for. A gigantic black camera — the kind with panoramic view — hangs directly overhead to enforce the honor system.

And I’ve never felt so… inhuman.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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