SPOILER ALERT: Some
key plot elements in Captain America: The Winter Soldier are discussed below.
I’m a little behind on movies. It was only last week that I saw the 2014
film Captain America: The Winter Solider.
Imagine how surprised I was to find that the ultimate weapon
of mass destruction in the arsenal of the supervillains turned out to be –
predictive analytics!
Seriously. The villains, who prize order over everything,
decide the best way to create a New World Order is to get rid of anyone who
might interfere with their plans -
before it even occurs to them to try.
So they plan to use an algorithm to predict who will become a terrorist
or, perhaps, just a dissenter, it’s never quite clear – and terminate them. They even try to seduce Captain America’s
allies by painting a picture of themselves as the good guys; after all, they
just want a world where terrorists could be stopped before they even
contemplated becoming terrorists.
Of course this is only the stuff of comic book sci-fi. In
real life no one would ever seriously propose a drastic, coercive, punitive
intervention into someone’s life based on an algorithm’s prediction that they
might do something bad in the future – unless, of course they work in child
welfare. Think I’m kidding: Check it out.
Of course, by the end of the movie Captain America has saved
the day – for now. But there’s always a sequel. Perhaps in the next sequel those
who hatched this scheme will have gone into hiding where they are more
appreciated – in child protective services agencies.
