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[Music]
uh
we have here a next presentation
from a guy called clemens
schul and i have him
actually in my pocket here um
it's this little man um and he's gonna
tell us
announces actually what it what he's
going to do or what he did
i just leave the stage for him yes
keep it pay attention here he is
clements
[Music]
foreign
so what you just saw was an exclusive
preview for an upcoming exhibition
um it's a play about the warning spot
which i'll tell about more later
and in the upcoming scene that i just
stopped now you would have seen the
prince is realizing that she
has to move to berlin so
um let's talk about moving to berlin
let's talk about
searching for a flat in berlin and
the situation might be similar in a lot
of other big cities but it hit
berlin especially hard and especially
fast recently
so what we can see here is
flat viewing and this was of course a
bit out of the norm because what
happened was that someone was offering a
decent flat
for a reasonable price and hundreds of
people showed up
um and now we're going to ask why right
and there are
deep going complex analysis of the
situation berlin
but i'd rather start with something
really really shallow
how berlin portrays itself um berlin
city of freedom
so they've got all these nice slogans
there that always end with
violence gate in berlin in berlin
because it's possible
in berlin and i was well what is
possible and what is this freedom
because really if i look at the
situation of myself and my partner
there's really nowhere it's possible for
me and berlin apparently
and i don't also understand what should
be this freedom of me standing in the
cold waiting to view a flat
what is this freedom exactly they're
talking about
the resource housing in berlin has hit
exhaustion
and why i'm putting this connection to
the resource exhaustion here is because
i think that housing is fundamentally
a resource allocation problem and so a
lot of what i'm going to say here about
housing could be generalized to other
resources
so of someone who went forth to find a
flat in berlin like the fairy tale
is a project i've started as a media
artist about two years ago
when i wanted to move back from here in
leipzig to berlin
and i needed a flat right i needed this
resource
and so i started looking for a flat and
it looks pretty much like this
you sit in front of your computer all
day and you're refreshing these same
websites endlessly it's really
mind-numbing you sit there and you sit
there this is day one
it's day two i hope i'm boring you by
this point because it's really buying
and boring and really annoying to search
for a flattened building you're just
wasting your time there
but then by day three i was so annoyed
that i thought well actually i do have a
background in computer science and this
is not exactly the thing i like to do
so why don't i simply
build a bot and automate this entire
process
and there i am building this bot which
from the outside i admit must look
exactly as boring and tedious as
searching for a flat yourself
and to do this i deployed some cutting
edge technology i'm going to spill some
secrets here so prepare
which is basically well i'm going to do
exactly the same thing as before just
automate it i was using a browser before
so now i'm just going to automate my
browser do the same things as before
and um so a lot of people ask me well
are you hacking this are you accessing
their api
no nothing i'm just using firefox as
before that's the nice little fellow
here
and then selenium which is a way to talk
to firefox to make it do things that you
would usually do
and then python which is a programming
language i like word simplicity
and what you're doing when you search
for a flat is that there's this button
so you're looking for something on this
webpage
and you say well it should say submit or
anfragent which is german for submit
this request
and then you're clicking on it cutting
edge technology
and so yeah if people ask me is this a
hack no it's just automation at work for
an individual
which seems to be something that we're
so unused to that it seems like a hack
but it really it's it's a hack as in
you're using this really dumb
old-school technology to do something
because you've kind of understood how it
works
but you're not doing anything unusual
really
and one thing i want to point out is
that building this bot is something i
personally enjoy
so i rather spend my time building a bot
than looking manually although i must
admit i probably spent as much time
tinkering on the bot
than if i had looked for the flat
manually honestly
but i'm also pointing this out here
because a lot of us here enjoy coding
and so we always think oh i could
automate this rather than doing it
manually but sometimes that thing that
we're automating also for other people
might be something they enjoy so we
should take a listen to kind of we're
automating parts of society that maybe
there are people that enjoy doing this
but i'm sure there's no one who ever
enjoyed looking for a flat online so i
feel good there
um yeah and then um i found a flat
through this process i wouldn't found
this flat otherwise because it was
online only for half an hour and then i
moved back to berlin and the end of the
story uh thanks for coming
[Music]
which is of course not what happened
because people i started asking me oh
i'm in this dire situation a friend of
mine is in this situation and
i get messages and messages and i
started wondering is it fair if i give
these people that happen to know me who
are often computer scientists themselves
um to give to them these tools um
because it's unjust in a sense right
um so let's review what happens if you
build a bot i mean it works we see this
i have a flattened berlin now it works
it fixed my situation but it's probably
unethical because you're getting this
advantage right
so what happens if you share it with
your friends it also works for them for
a while
i guess it also kind of fixes their
situation and it's still problematic and
then you're like oh i'll release this on
github and everybody can use it
but that's still your friends it's still
people who can use this technology
the first version of the bot i couldn't
give to anybody who is not technical
because you to configure it in the
command line all these things that's not
public that's still your friends just
internationally
so what if you give this to the real
public will it still work
will it fix anything and most of all in
what ethical situation are we there if
we're doing this
also how do you even do that how do you
give a bot to the public
because you're still in this resource
allocation problem
you're still fighting for the same
resource you're still competing so
there's often the incentive to not even
give it to everybody
and not everybody can be satisfied it's
not something i can fix magically to
give a flat to everybody in berlin
so um there was an interesting situation
and if you're a researcher you would
probably now say oh i'll write a paper
about this
as a media artist you will say oh let's
do an exhibition about this
and so this is exhibition number one act
for the first act
your future's calling reply now um which
was showed in the art academy here in
leipzig
um and one thing to know for the people
who are not from from germany there's a
bit of a competition between leipzig and
berlin just who's cooler and where do
you move an artist if you really want to
be on the edge
and it was hanging in the atrium of the
university so it was confronting
everybody the moment they entered the
school
and what you see up there hanging is a
banner which is using the same slogans
as we saw before
and it reads in in english search for a
flat on the cultural metropole
secure your career as an artist because
it is possible in berlin
and by this stochastic approach i
thought this is the language that you
actually reach artists with hopefully
and what was hanging above it was this
box with a printer inside
that would print flat ads coming online
in berlin
in real time and bit by bit flood the
atrium
with these oh
give me a second
okay sorry attack problems um
it was filling the atrium with these
here we are with these ads and what
would also happen
is that every time something came online
yes um you would get this notification
sound
and what i was referring to there is
that for a lot of people
by now technology has some become
something very negative
so they have this thing in their pocket
that is pushing them to do this thing
they're feeling surveilled all the time
so we've got this very negative
narration of technology in our lives
um and this was also kind of like
reminding them oh you haven't made it
yet you haven't moved to berlin pull out
your phone now
do this now i would see people sitting
with me in a bar suddenly pull out the
phone being like oh there's a new flat
online i have to reply to this now right
and so they're constantly being feeling
like you're being punished by technology
and um people are going back to brick
phones they dream of moving to the
countryside and i wonder
where have these these dreams gone
about automation where where people
could maybe feel feel positive about
this
yeah now it worked for once
yes um so so where's where are these
dreams um
about automation is anybody still
feeling hopeful
and so one person that's feeling hopeful
is the bot
um the bot made this promise to us um
the bot said well i can fix this for you
we can come back to new utopias
and so if we want to give this to the
public if we want a public utopia
we need a lot of computers and then we
can show this to the public so i
selected this
shop front in norcon which is an area in
berlin which has
been hit especially hard by
gentrification
and um the idea was that people could
come there
and sign up during the exhibition for
the voting spot they would configure it
for themselves
and then it would be standing there in
this shop front day and night and search
for a flat for them
and people in berlin really know the
interface of these platforms
so it had this strong impact on them
they would walk by past it and be like
wow this would be cool if i didn't have
to do it but uh unfortunately it doesn't
work because people
when they realized this is art
immediately thought it wouldn't work
there's a strong association people have
between
art thingies and things that don't work
they thought it was a video or they
thought it was that
no one believed it actually work but
they have this imagination that could
trigger the imagination of whoa what if
we had a world where these things were
possible and then at the end of the
exhibition i made this possible
um i put it on the warning spot website
you can still download it right now
it works where it was downloadable for
all the major platforms
and now coming back to this what is
public if you're building a bot
public to me means it's easily
installable you don't need to know about
technology you don't need to understand
anything
and so i looked for something where i
could have the same automation tools as
before
so a thinly wrapped browser and i know a
lot of you hate electron
but really for something like this we
need to get something to the public in
an easy and understandable way it's a
great tool because public means
accessible
otherwise you're just building software
for you and your friends
and so i spend a lot of time tinkering
on the user interface it first greets
you
then it tells you a bit about well this
is actually art it's not just something
that you can use you can use it but
there's an art aspect
to it and then comes the important part
the configuration
you first tell it this is where i want
to live
this is the type of flat that i need and
here i already started
inserting some useful things that you
usually can't do such as saying well
i'm not willing to pay more than 10
euros per square meter so i'm willing to
put this much money up but only if i get
more space because otherwise you just
end up with
expensive apartments with little space
left
then you have to put in tons of personal
data which was not my idea this is just
what the platforms request from you
and now the cool part
your personal application and as you can
see here it uses
placeholders so the bot can later on
imitate you much better it will pull on
put in the landlord's name
or the landlady so the lesser's data
will be in there the street data will be
in there
normal people also just copy paste and
do this by hand and now the bot will
pretend to be this human for you
then you review everything if the data
is correct and then you start it and you
see on the right hand side the
normal user interface so you can really
see it acting you can see it clicking
you can see it typing
there's an overlay for you to understand
it better but it's really just the
the the normal website running in the
background and on the left side you have
an overview of what you've done so far
and then comes the fun part where you
watch your computer
uh writing this application for you
so now you will ask okay this is a nice
bot you've showed us you can
you can build a bot but where's the art
in this right what's what's the artistic
aspect of this
um and so i haven't there's one more
thing i haven't shown of the exhibition
yet
there was this kind of like art stopper
kind of like a shop stopper just for art
[Music]
and it claimed that the artwork which
you cannot see here
is the change of the network so what is
this change in the network at what i'm
referring to here
there's three ways of looking for a flat
at the moment you can do it manually
you can search with the notifications
the platform provides
or you do it fully automated and when
you're doing it manually
you'll sit there refreshing the same
website all day
because if you're not fast you're not
getting it you can wait for their
notifications but the problem there is
that the notification might come so late
that the flat has gone on offline again
like flats in berlin or sometimes online
only for 30 minutes or something
or the bot sits there and refreshes the
website all day which
sounds better right then you normally
spend valuable time reviewing the flat
and this is something i'll come back to
later a lot with this time you spend
reviewing flats
and what you have to keep in mind here
is that you'll often assess a flat that
you won't get afterwards
so you're just wasting time on things
that you you you have no chance of
getting
um the bot doesn't do this it just
applies to everything
and then comes the part where you have
to write the application
which doesn't consume that much time i
mean copy pasting and putting in the
lesser's name doesn't take much time but
you have to be in front of your computer
which is hard especially if you're a
working person most of the flats come
online during the day
um and you have to be there to do this
physically or at least on your on your
device
um the bot can do this by you by by
itself um because like this is one thing
you'll all know bots are really good at
copy pasting and this is what's
necessary
here natural bot work
and then it's lesser's turn the lesser
will go through the first few messages
that hit their inbox so it's important
to be fast and then it says well is this
person
does it fit my criteria and invite you
or maybe not invite you
and i've explicitly left out the option
that the bot gets rejected here because
of course it can get rejected
but you will never know you have never
reviewed the apartment you have not
written an
application you've not wasted time on it
so it doesn't matter if it gets rejected
once in a while
whereas if you really wanted this flat
you'll feel sad if you don't get it
and now this little black bot jumped up
there right so what does this mean
it means that there's another case of
people feeling mistreated by technology
when the lesser start using email
responders
automatically to simply message the
first 20 30 people
the viewing is next week at this time
and date and
there was this article in the new york
times recently where it said
that human contact is becoming a luxury
good and so not even when you're
applying for a flat you're being treated
by human anymore
so sometimes you'll feel sad that you
didn't get the viewing sometimes you'll
feel happy
but in the case of the bot this is the
first time you assess the flat
so only if you're invited you start
considering will i really go there or
not
um and so i want to talk about about
like working time here
and why working time matters and this
will maybe get a bit chaotic but i'll
still try
is that if we jump on this theory of
like the labor theory of value which you
might not subscribe to but just as a
thought experiment
it says that a product is just measured
by the socially necessary time to
produce it that's its value
if you look at time historically you
would have a real estate agent
they would spend time on finding this
resource for you and you would give them
money
normal transaction now these platforms
appear
online platforms which promise to you
you can do this in your
like previously free time um
you can do this of course for free um
you're saving money there
but you're not realizing that in a sense
you're working because they're somehow
still making a profit so who's making
this profit how if no one is spending
time on it
and so so this gives came came to me to
this idea of okay if
if we're not okay with the current
situation of housing maybe this is a way
we can reject it by saying okay we're
not putting up free time anymore to work
on this
we'll push this to the lessers because
if you're not spending this time someone
has to spend it and this will be the
lessers again so there could be this
hypothesis of like a working time denial
of service attack
which sounds cool but of course doesn't
work
because the lesser is what they will do
is still just go to the
10 20 first messages and select the best
offer that you gave them because we're
always getting giving them our best
effort
and they can just choose so as a thought
experiment it's nice
it's something i would keep like keep
you in the back of your head
but it's not how it works the lessers
will still always win
and so if we say well this is what we
dreamed of right you write the simple
python script
and then you fix the social problem this
is what we wanted
but what really happens is this you
write this
simple python script you think you can
oh we can just do some text solutionism
and the problems just multiplicate
because the problems will adapt there
will be problems within your solution
all these things
and so the the slogan of the bot i've
come up with was
there's no technological solution for
social problems
and of course some of you will jump up
here and say no no no there are
things and so i will go back to okay
there are no
exclusively technological solutions to
social problems
because of course under certain
circumstances sciences
technology technology can play an
important role
but where i want to get at is that if we
simply reframe this as
it's not a solution it's a reaction if
we just change this word
we get a lot further so let's reframe
this i've not solved the berlin housing
market situation i've
reacted to it so do this the next time
you're discussing a solution with
someone
see if the reaction would not be the the
proper word for what you want
and if we say a reaction another thing
becomes apparent that
someone else might react too if i'd
solved it
no one would talk about anymore it would
be solved but i've only reacted so
the platforms will also react and
reacting for them mostly means
forbidding
how do you forbid a bot well there's
mainly three ways
you can put in technical barriers um
which are mostly designed to say well
you
you should be human to do this prove
your humanity
which might get interesting in the
future with more ai and
yeah better capture prevention
technology
there's legal barriers which is simple
you just tell people do not automate
this otherwise i will sue you and you
will be bankrupt forever
seems like a simple solution and there's
another thing that we
don't think about that much but which is
important which is simply moving on so
people admire capitalism for its ability
to adapt
and so this is these are three startups
that from what i understand have adapted
to this situation
these are platforms where you sign up
you put in your profile and you can't
search for flats
they have a matching algorithm which
will then say oh this lesser is looking
for someone with a high income so
hey do you lesser pick one of these 10
people that we suggest to you
and i hope that you all see the danger
here is that what is happening now
implicitly
would be explicit that people can filter
by only high income people
only people well it might be latent
variables and some point in the future
only people that are of like the social
class all these things
so it just moves on and then the
question is can we even use automation
for good
is it maybe implicitly designed to not
help us but the other side
and to understand this um i'll go to to
michelle soto who has these two words
which we use in our
normal life interchangeably but
so he does not use them interchangeably
he says strategy is something
institutions do
when they're trying to plan for for
activities and there's tactics which we
use individual as individuals and one
example for this is that if we look at a
city
institutions such as the city government
come up with strategies they say here
are the entrances to this park they're
the exits this is where you should move
and all of us we have tactics we're like
oh i'll do a shortcut here i'll do this
i'll do that so we
the the strategy never really works out
because we adapted for our needs
but our tactics never change the rules
of the game and that's the important
part here we don't change the rules of
the game we just adapt
and the bot is obviously a tactic if i
do it for myself i found a way to
to like find my ways through the housing
market
and the question if i release this to
the public can this become a strategy
can we scale software in a sense that
we're now on an equal eye level
um to to this really becoming a
strategic thing
and the answer is of course not in case
of the warnings but but theoretically
maybe
and how would this maybe look like we're
still allocating resources and so what
we would need if we really wanted to
have a strategy here is to have a proper
resource allocation mechanism
that works that isn't just based on
money that is not perpetuating the
inequalities we already have and this is
the hard part we live in a society
where the only resource allocation
mechanism we know is money
which leads exactly to capitalism so the
challenge is to find
new resource allocation mechanisms which
i honestly don't know about but there's
people out there who look into this
which we should listen to i'm just an
artist
and so as a summary of this also like a
very obvious take-home lesson
if you build bots for yourself ask
yourself am i gaining an advantage here
and is it unfair
am i giving others the possibility to
take advantage of this which will
usually be your friends either physical
friends or github friends
and then would it be theoretically
possible to give everybody this benefit
and if you say oh yes i have something
that does match these criterias
then that appears the question should we
have a right to do this should there be
a right to automate
which is hard this question because what
would be the implications of this if we
look at congress
they're struggling with finding a way
that is both privacy preserving
and does not resort to brain licenses
and giving out these tickets
so it's hard to allow automation without
being
deeply intrusive on privacy or some
other level
and allowing for this so a bot for
yourself works
whereas the bot for the public often
leads to expectable systemic failure so
i did i released the voting spot
with with two intentions on one hand
giving people this
this thought of oh automation could be
cool it could be something positive
this could be something i'm looking
forward to but then also the failure so
this is like it's
it's a drama right and we're now okay
coming to this dramatic end
where we simulate failure we know that
the voting spot it currently works you
can download it
but it will fail in the future and so i
wanted to simulate this before it
happens there we can learn from it and
adapt as a society and the way i wanted
to simulate this
is coming back to theater theater is a
really old technique for assimilating
something
and sharing your insights with an
audience
so as the last consequence which is uh
the title of act
iii we well i build a theater
and as i'm into automation i built a
fully automated puppet theater
uh again puppet theater being something
that's publicly accessible in my opinion
it's something that people can relate to
and thereby hopefully
better understand what i'm trying to
tell as a story
um and again i'm using very high-end
technology
um so the the plot of the theater we
read from the very beginning is that the
princess wants to move back to berlin
and the warning spot tells her well i've
helped so many people i will help you
find a flat
and the the princess historically in
these german puppet theaters is someone
very helpless
so she's in put the position of someone
needy here but if you watch the full
play you will see that she's really cool
don't worry the volume spot says i can
do this for you he's helped so many
people
but now as everybody's using it the
landlords and the lessers are reacting
and they have the lesser bot now the
famita bot and the fermitabot keeps
rejecting the princes because other
people with more income have also
started using the bot
and her income is not high enough to
have any chance anymore
and we'll now jump back into the play at
the dramatic end
with the the war of the bots
[Music]
[Laughter]
foreign
you
thank you claimant
i had you in my pocket so uh
i can imagine some people have a
question here and please step up and
take a microphone and uh
yeah drop it number four there is
someone
i'm sorry if it's on your website but
did you plan on putting the volume spot
to other cities
uh it's a question has been asked from
day one um
why berlin why not another city this and
that situation a city is in a much worse
situation
um the re the reason i chose berlin is
not only because i was there myself
um it's because i think that it's the
the city the city in berlin that is the
most interesting the
in germany that is the most interesting
this aspect it feels to me like the one
city where this situation could actually
change
um so they're right now debating
something called the meet and decal
kind of like the cap on rents which will
really get into the situation where we
have to reconsider how do we allocate
flats afterwards so i think it's the
city where the most is moving
and i want you to have it only in one
city because to me artworks are kind of
like experiments that exist
outside of the scientific way so i'm
still wanting to experiment with
something i want to have a model
if i do this with every city in germany
we don't learn anything because it will
just change everywhere
i wanted to have one city where we can
see how does it change if we apply the
solution
solution right i'm using it myself
how does it be how does the city react
if we do this com in comparison to all
the other cities
um and so i mean the the source code is
in github i know that all of you can fix
it for your own cities
um i'm not doing it for the public
because that's not my goal it's still an
artistic
research in that sense where i want to
see what happens in berlin
yes number three is here another
question
yeah thank you for your talk um i have
not really questions
only two recommendations uh well first
of all
you said something uh in the end about
uh well
people being rich and how to pass by
them
sometimes i myself i think of that we
are the new riches we the technical
people who
get around the the expensive things by
automating things
because it's great to automate things
and pass by everything you buy
by the people who have to pay for
everything
i don't mean stealing but automating
things well that gives you some kind of
richness that
we deserve second thing is
i saw your theater thing and first thing
i thought was oh this would be cool
if you would do it with an improvisation
group i play improvisation together
myself
and if you get an improvisation group on
stage
and you give them the input i am a robot
you play the robot
and they play with you you can get
amazing scenes
on and share ideas about this whole
housing problem not only embarrassing
the commercials here hey hey sorry
but improvisation okay the advertisement
time is over number two again
well let me give you do you want one
shoot um
you said well there's other forms of
being rich such as knowing how to code
and i think in that sense we should uh
see capital as something very wide
capital is not only money it's also
the social capital this cultural capital
and in the long term these all converge
into one another so it really doesn't
matter
if you only know how to code now at some
point you will accumulate classical
capital so we can focus on that i think
two things i want to ask the first thing
is did you check
github before creating everything from
scratch because they are already project
projects there that work quite fine
and i want to understand um well
at the point that i checked there was
someone who had built something that
would automate parts of it but as i was
trying to point out
something being on github to me is not
the same as being public
and so i wanted to build something i
mean i've built the bot twice with the
exact purpose of building something
that's not on github but somewhere where
people can actually use it
so i was reviewing things that existed
but my goal was different it was not
just to find something for me
but to release something to the public
okay and the other thing i want to ask
is why did you choose such a high level
of
automation advertisements on emu scout
for example are
deactivated after 25 non-premium
requests
and if you give such a bot with a high
automation to many people
this will lead to many flats going off
the market
very fast from people who did not even
check them manually
you're finding out one thing where you
can say okay this is problematic the bot
shouldn't exist you're creating a
problem and i was trying to point this
out before that whenever you
you react to a problem that's social and
not technical
you will create new problems and so what
you're pointing out is one of these many
new problems that will arise from this
um the same being like what is with
people that don't have a desktop
computer at home right i met people at
the exhibition that were like
i can't download this at home because i
don't have a desktop computer i don't
have internet at home
and this is where you must see this is
not meant
to to solve this to do this or to that
this is an art project i want to get
into this discussion with you i want to
have people on the street thinking okay
maybe we need different technology maybe
we need different regulation a different
society
so this is about this creating this
imagination about creating aesthetical
moments for yourself
and not fixing this so yes there are all
these problems but that was not my my
focus in this i wanted to to have a
theater there where people can start
dreaming rather
okay thanks correct number three please
hi you basically said if i use your bots
and the response rate depends on my
income
what is your experience if i say okay
but i pay more for the flat
so as it's capitalism if i pay more for
something and i say i pay more
for my flat i will get more responses
i've heard from people doing this in
other countries i've never heard of
someone actually doing it in germany to
just offer to pay more
i have no idea how people react here if
there's something where they can't do it
like
it's not something people talk about in
my surroundings so i have no idea really
um it might work it might not work i
don't know
no i mean more if i if you search for a
flat which costs 700
it's really hard to find because so many
people are looking for flats
but they say okay but for me it's fine
also 900 and i
adapt the search parameters do i get a
higher response rate with your bond
if if you i mean the thing will if
you're looking for flats for 700 in
berlin
you'll likely get very few responses
because there's very few flats like that
out there
i can tell you that much um i've not
done any data
i was considering adding data research
parts to this i've not done so i cannot
give you any statistics on where you'll
get the best response rates
it's out there you can tinker with this
but that was not my focus here
okay thanks thank you are there other
questions here
online no one online
um very getting close i think bourdieu
is a good
reference actually that he gave
regarding capital
social capital economic ground you know
look that up
because that's actually the next step
about what is there in the context
and in what kind of context one you want
to live actually
and with what kind of people do you have
to integrate
thank you for this fantastic thing for
the theater that you gave us
thank you for the doll thank you
you