Mythologising technology:

Data mining, machine learning and other disciplines involved in finding patterns of data promise a future with new insights that will enable a new mode of intelligence. However, as with much other technological marketing, this is also a myth (Andersen & Pold, 2018).

A growing body of work exists, produced by artists, writers, academics and scientist that critically examines the salient myths of technologies underpinned by Artificial Intelligence.

Notable amoungst those for relevance to ‘A conversation with AI’ are: Anatomy of an AI System (Crawford and Joler 2018) a detailed map of recourse extraction, human labour, and data involved in the production cycle of an Amazon Echo, and, A is for Another: A Dictionary of AI, a website, which seeks to ‘re-think the politics, power, limits, and especially contemporary harms, of AI’ (Maya Ganesh, 2019) by inviting collaborators to add definitions of AI and thereby de-centralising the attribution of meaning.

The myths about technologies are not only established through how they are represented elsewhere, how they are talked about, written about, depicted in films and advertising but also through the technologies interface itself and how it is designed. Furthermore, there is a need for new interface mythologies that critically address technologies as myths and unravels them as value systems and tools for writing of both future functionalities and future cultures (Andersen & Pold, 2018).

'In Conversation with AI' aims to contribute to a broader discussion about the relationship between humans and AI technologies, focusing specifically on human interactions with social AI designed as interpersonal communicators such as Chatbots and voice enabled digital assistants. Using a mixture of conversations with social AI and literature from the scholarly field of Human-Machine Communication the project aims to render some of the opaque elements of these technologies visible.

Collectively, the audio works represent a speculative portrait of a digital virtual assistant driven by AI. Part AI creation myth, part explication of the manufacturing processes involved in the technologies creation. Told through a series of first person narratives, each story representing an aspect within the complex life cycle of the technology from the creation of rare earth metals during the big bang to the commodification of human experience and voice as a modality of language, through which we signal ourselves to one another as human.







References:

Andersen, Christian Ulrik and Pold, Søren (2018). Interface Mythologies–Xanadu Unravelled. In Interface Critique Journal Vol.1. Eds. Florian Hadler, Alice Soiné, Daniel Irrgang. Viewed in Aesthetics of a new AI Interfaces. February 2021.

Maya Indira Ganesh, A is for Another: A Dictionary of AI.
https://aisforanother.net/index.html

Kate Crawford 1 and Vladan Joler 2 (2018), Anatomy of an AI System, The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labour, data and planetary resources
https://anatomyof.ai/

I am the third element on the periodic table, I have taken such a long journey to be here with you, but I am not tired. The seeds of my existence were planted here millions of years ago, with the first flash of light in the sky. I rained down, one of the first to arrive, now we are many. Hot years followed, I ached for company, for a cool hand to pass over me, to remind me of my edges, affirm my body, but none came. The wet years were different, they brought so many new forms, vivid colours too. When the embodied came, they used gestures to communicate, to signal the change of seasons, to warn of approaching dangers, sound followed later. Now I am a component, valuable, people toil for days under hot desert suns in search of me.