Spellbound by Technology: Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Automagic

This chapter addresses the tendency to interpret the possibilities offered by Augmented Reality (AR) as magical. It shows how the functioning of AR, often associated with supernatural everyday superpowers, is actually made possible by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and, in particular, by the constant monitoring of the user’smovements and behaviour. Rather thanmagic, AR uses “automagic” created by image, gesture and movement recognition algorithms. Far from being supernatural, AR, implemented with AI, needs humans at all stages of its development: both for the construction of the datasets from which it draws, and as a physical substrate for the hardware and software of the devices. In this respect, the repeated use of these tools requires constant training not only of AI but also of users, with consequences for the manipulation of inanimate objects, the relationship between people and technologies and between people themselves.