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Artificial Intelligence—AI—is a technology in its infantry that makes numerous appearance in science fictions. Different science fictions may give different presentation of AI. When included in robots, the robots can intelligently carry out tasks assigned to them with little human attention required. In other instances, AI is portrayed as a computer program that is capable of interacting with human. In Kim Robinson’s Red Mars, Pauline is such a computer program.

Red Mars tells a compelling story about a group of scientists on Mars debating about terraforming. One of the main figureheads, John Boone, frequently utilizes an AI with the name Pauline. John uses her for a wide array of tasks, such as piloting his vehicle while he sleeps (a technology that is, in fact, becoming a reality), bringing up encyclopedia articles, collecting data and analyzing them, etc. In many ways, she is comparable to Google, but her ability to converse with John makes her closer to Siri. And, just as with Siri, there are many ethically questionable things that John asks Pauline to do:

• “It was a messy business, and he had to rely on Pauline not only for statistics but advice, which was worrying.”
• “He went back to his bed and thought about it.  ‘Oh, by the way, Pauline; please check Sax's records, and give me a list of all the dowsing expeditions in the last year.’”
• "Pauline, click into the building comm center and copy anything you can that they send out."
• He kept track through Pauline of the movements of quite a few people, the UNOMA investigating force among them.
• Being the engineer behind the living complex’s security system, he utilized Pauline to control the surveilance cameras when he suspected somebody intruded his room for ill intent (indeed, someone planned to frame him into murder by leaving a dead body inside his room).

Readers can easily notice the heavy reliance on Pauline that John exhibits, and more importantly, the reduced sense of privacy and security that comes with Pauline. Pauline can easily pull up track record of anyone’s movement through the database, find any file, and infiltrate security systems (albeit a bit limited). Case in point, using the tag that the dead body inside John’s room had, Pauline quickly identified the person. Although a viable technology and no doubt helpful for research, there seem to be limited individual privacy with technology like Pauline around. In addition, while Pauline could freely pull data, authority could not access what Pauline searched without John’s permission. This one-way privacy protection can be problematic in a megacity environment. With how Pauline was presented, it is implied that stalking can become a crime on a whole new level.

Pauline, find me the location of my husband as well as route his autopilot directly home

In the Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card, readers can find another computer program AI like Pauline and Siri: Jane. Jane is first introduced in Speaker for the Dead, a second book in the series chronologically. She is presented as a supercomputer program that only the universe’s ansible network can harbor her (the ansible network is another product science fiction). She becomes friend with the series’ protagonist Andrew Wiggins, more commonly referred to as Ender. Unlike Pauline, Jane is presented as being much more advanced and complex than Pauline.

• She is “capable of performing trillions of tasks simultaneously, and has millions of levels of attention, even her most unaware one being much more alert than a human.”
• “She is the epitome of humanity's fear: an intelligent, thinking, computer program that cannot be controlled.”
• In the novel Xenocide, which is sequel to Speaker for the Dead, a fleet of starship is sent out to destroy Ender’s planet, which is home to a race of alien species that the interstellar government fears. Jane removes herself from the ansible network (the method requires a reading of the novel) while shutting it down, cutting all communication to the fleet.

An artist's rendition of Siri

Imagine a future where technology like Jane and Pauline exist. Will you be comfortable knowing someone can monitor your movement, or that a supercomputer is keeping track of what you’re doing on your computer? Those inherent security concerns are what we will have to prepare for in the future.