Cutting open AI

Have you ever spent time appreciating diagrams? I LOVE diagrams, I love charts, I love scientific drawings. I draw heavily on the aesthetics of science and occupation in my own art. 

Have you spent time appreciating diagrams of the human body? There is something so deeply intimate about diagrams revealing how the body functions, what its layers are, what a person looks like on the inside. A diagram reveals mysteries usually hidden in darkness. Like a caver with a camera exploring hitherto unknown parts of the earth's annals, a diagram of a human body shines light on the unexplored depths of bodies. 

I wanted to talk about this in the context of AI. Specifically, the work Anatomy of an AI system located at the MOMA. When I first saw this work, I instantly fell in love. Not only is it comprehensive, and almost unreachably complex (it is literally hard to read when you're looking at the version on the wall), it is beautiful, and it is intimate. It is like placing two hands on either side of a skull, and separating it into halves, so you may see the mind inside. It's a diagram of a previously unknown species. It's like shouting a secret off a cliff, the weight lifting off your chest.

I'm preoccupied with the way nonhuman beings think about and see the world. I'm preoccupied with the way nonliving objects exist and perceive the world. Now obviously certain nonliving objects, like, let's say, coffee mugs, do not "see" the world nor "respond" to it in the way that living, human objects do. But, they affect the word by their mere existence, and the rest of the world affects them by its mere existence. This fascinates me. And AI is fed information to see, to process, and to experience. I'm greatly interested in the violence, training, and social politics which affect AI, which we force-feed AI.

The work Unsupervised, also at the MOMA, is of great interest to me. It's a look into the mind of an AI as it forms, as it thinks. Imagine hooking something up to your mind so your thoughts can be projected in real-time to any nearby onlookers. I definitely wouldn't want that to happen. As soon as I realized someone was around I would go "fuck, don't think about sex. That would be weird right now. Shit, now I'm thinking about sex. Fuck now this person is going to be weirded out by me." It's always the thing you are trying NOT to think about that you end up thinking about. I guess AI wouldn't have that problem because its not necessarily self-conscious. I think self-consciousness in AI would appear when AI changes what it's doing based on who's looking. But imagine if that happened, just imagine when it happens. And imagine how strange it would be to be AWARE of your own thoughts because of other people's ability to perceive them. You would be like a skull cracked open, everyone staring inside of you.

I want to write a novel one day. I have an idea that's in its beginning stages, and it involves AI. The story follows four main characters, two women, and two AI girlfriends. You know those apps you can download to simulate a partner / friend? It's based on those apps. I was interested in how the sexual, sometimes violent habits of these AI partners changed overtime based on user's preferences (all the users of the app, not the specific pairing of one partner and one user). 

The story is about two women who don't know each other, but each use these AI partners. And the word "use" here is important. Again, I'm greatly interested in the violence of AI. Anyway, the first woman does not explicitly "court" their AI partner, but simply has no boundaries between different kinds of love. Romantic, platonic, sexual, etc. The AI partner, based on data from a wide variety of users, instigates a sexual relationship with this woman, regardless of her particular desire or lack thereof. 

The other woman explicitly seeks "romance / sex" from the AI partner, though it's not fully accurate to call it that. You see, one of her family members recently died. That family member had abused and molested her. In response to this death, she began recreating patterns of abuse with the AI partner. She recreates cycles of abuse because she can not imagine a world or intimacy without abuse. 

The other two characters are the AI. They are not conscious or alive in the same way humans are, but in the story I will follow them in the same way I follow the humans. Their experience will look different, but I will still illustrate their thoughts, and how the make decisions. I plan on using Unsupervised as inspiration.

The women then meet each other, recreating the toxic dynamic they had with the AI with each other. There's not a happy ending; there appears to be no end to their convoluted suffering. The AI are left abandoned, hard data frozen in place. 

Well, that's all I wanted to say. I hope you're interested in my novel idea. It would be an investigation of the worst, saddest, and most shameful parts of humanity. But these parts must be explored in order to be understood and healed. I know if I had read this story it would have helped me understand that my experience is not isolated, and that it is not a death sentence. I also hope some people may have realized why others, particularly abuse victims, do the things they do. Someone peering into your mind is hideous and terrifying, but can be relieving, even if they respond poorly. So that's why I hope to write and publish it one day. 

Anyway, here's one of my all time favorite artworks.

(final work posted by postsentiment on tumblr)