Billionaire Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer gushed over his new stadium’s creepy facial recognition software during a Tuesday press conference.
Announcing plans for the NBA to host the 2026 All Star Game in his new $2 billion Inglewood Intuit Dome, Ballmer beamed proudly over a rash of high tech advances his passion project will feature.
One promised feature was notably more dystopian than the rest: a fan reward system that uses facial recognition to offer fans discounts if they’re cheering particularly hard for the Clippers.
“You get up, we’re gonna know that you stood up, as long as you want us to, you’ve gotta give us the permission,” he told press Tuesday. “We’ll know that you get up, we know that you cheered, we know how loudly you cheered. If you’re good on those things, we can give you little discounts around the shop just to reinforce that excellent behavior that we want and need of our fans to make this thing rocking.”
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer says that fans who stand up and cheer at games will be rewarded with discounts in the team’s new arena.pic.twitter.com/yjn5lTuL3i
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) January 17, 2024
Little discounts! Lovely! A totally fair exchange for the indefinite suspension of my personal privacy and dignity. What a real treat!
Full disclosure, I’m a Clippers fan and I actually admire Ballmer for the most part. Plus I greatly appreciate the fact that he’s funding his new stadium privately rather than asking for help from the taxpayer. (RELATED: Los Angeles Clipper Kawhi Leonard Signs Massive Extension: REPORT)
However, I find it deeply unsettling that big tech billionaires are no longer even trying to hide their intentions to modify social behavior with cheap thrills and easy dopamine. Ballmer’s attitude is symptomatic of a larger ethos in Silicon Valley and other big tech cities like Seattle, where Ballmer served as Microsoft‘s CEO for 14 years.
People like Ballmer and his buddies Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg see the rest of us as widgets, cogs in the greater machine, a machine that their massive tech conglomerates control.
The Pavlovian notion of offering a little treat in exchange for good behavior is more akin to the Chinese social credit system than it is a symbol of American enterprise.
Sure, you have to opt in, but I doubt people fully understand what they’re signing up for. If somebody steals your password or your credit card number, you can change it. But if somebody breaks into the stadiums’ servers and steals all the facial recognition data, what are you supposed to do? Get a new face?
The patronizing nature of the micro reward system is not the only danger when it comes to the future of live entertainment. New York Knicks owner James Dolan has already proven just how effective facial recognition tools can be in the pursuit of petty revenge.
Dolan has reportedly used facial recognition at Madison Square Garden, where his Knicks and New York Rangers play, to bar at least three separate lawyers involved in litigation against him from entering the venue, according to the New York Post.
One lawyer, 44-year-old Kelly Conlon was even reportedly booted from Radio City Music Hall, which Dolan also owns, just for working at a firm that was suing him, according to the New York Post. Conlon was barred from entry while trying to take a Girl Scout troop to see the Rockettes, and according to the Post she wasn’t even involved in the case.
Essentially, according to the Post, Dolan has implemented a policy barring any lawyer who works for a firm involved in litigation against him from attending any event at any of his many establishments, which include both the Garden and Radio City as well as numerous restaurants and properties throughout the city.
“MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys from firms pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved. While we understand this policy is disappointing to some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adversarial environment,” a spokesman from Dolan’s company told the Post.
While some, like Ballmer, may be pumped about the impending technological revolution, it’s obvious that in the wrong hands this powerful machinery can be abused to horrific ends.
Ballmer’s stadium opens sometime in June and will likely be ready to host the Clippers by next season. Its $2 billion price tag makes it the most expensive stadium in NBA history, beating out the also-high-tech Chase Center in San Francisco by over half a billion dollars. If the trend continues, the NBA’s latest technological marvel will likely not be its last.