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Sam Leach: Perceiving Artificial Intelligence —A Multifaceted Exploration
Seducer, Coach, Oracle, Alchemist and Priest. Whatever your views on Artificial Intelligence, the human response to the new knowledges spat out by machines is real. Our thinking is altered, identities formed and emotional responses shaped. Amid all the hype surrounding AI, the human agent is still present in the creation, the synthesis and the reaction, and Sam Leach’s work brings this agent greater visibility.
By Dr Kristin Alford
Every day I pass by Flow Landscape (2018), a painting by Dr Sam Leach we commissioned for our first exhibition MOD. The fine details expose odd scientific shapes of infrastructure in an otherwise moody landscape, poking at the ways in which we might understand land from human and non-human perspectives.
While in that case we were considering avian perspectives, AI perspectives have dominated the technology risks news since the public release of ChatGPT followed by an amplification of the warnings about the existential risks of generative artificial intelligences.
This is something that we have been discussing over the last few years, most recently with our online game POINT OF IMPACT. This game explored the risks and consequences of applying artificial intelligence to solve the climate crisis. It’s also a topic that comes up regularly in conversations with visitors at MOD. as we explore the ethical boundaries of research and new technologies.
Exploring these boundaries are evident in Leach’s recent body of work too, with works that use artificial intelligence in various ways. Experiments include the development of algorithms that generate imagery trained from inputs selected by Leach, or those that provide a sense of prediction about the direction of new works. Leach and I teased out the ways in which his exploration of approaches to artmaking using AI intersect with the conversations we have with visitors and researchers. As we circled around the use cases of AI, certain archetypes started to emerge.
Like the serpent tempting Eve with forbidden fruit and the promise of god-like knowledge, consumer AI in the form of large language models like ChatGPT tempts us with the promise of summarising the infinite knowledge of the internet, improved productivity and the gift of finding the right words in times of stress. Board charters, letters of resignation, radio guest biographies and eulogies are all examples recently whispered in confession. Education is grappling with detection and prohibition, and image generation tainted by artistic copyright issues. Yet to not use these tools is to deny reward. Here AI is a seducer of our attention in our quest to be better, faster, smarter.
I am a fan of the promise of productivity though. My early experiments with ChatGPT were about fine-tuning weekly family meal plans and incremental experiments in having it dictate exercise plans in the hope I might adhere to something. The promise of AI is to fine-tune the human condition, bringing the personal data of genetics, location, social networks, consumer data and biometrics together for the creation of a personal digital twin where we may all be coached to perfection.
As a futurist, much of my craft is scanning research and media for repeated signals, sensing when there are enough signs to suggest system change. Or summarising evidence to support a phenomenon as a significant driver of future change. While not technically prediction, these clues suggest possible alternatives of the future. With large datasets and modelling capability, the idea of a predictable future becomes even more enticing. In a recent exhibition at MOD., Nina Rajic’s Mirror Ritual provoked delight and confusion. This interactive artwork invites visitors to sit in front of a mirror where they are then greeted with a poem crafted by AI based on their apparent mood. Often these poems had layers of relevant meaning, picking up details for people relating to jobs, sickness and personal stress. Patterns of repetition and variation that echo in Leach’s work. This processed data feels weighty, it feels real, though there is still no guarantee of accuracy.
The oracle is a false idol, a hint at truth that requires a healthy dose of doubt. Repeated remix and copies of copies make the oracle even further shaky.
Even more so when the processes of algorithmic calculation remain in their black boxes, where we are unable to assess the weight of bias in the training sets or interrogate the assumptions in the calculations. Even the labelling of querying as prompt engineering seems to deflect. Our visitors seem uncertain, willing to take the psychometric calculations of a work like Lucy McRae’s Biometric Mirror at face value, celebrating their assessments of being found weird or truthful from a photograph. Like an alchemist, Leach’s work also leans into exploration of the mechanics, with mis-trained algorithms provoking unexpected weirdness.
It may be that AI is as a priest calling us to faith and service. Despite false oracles and misguided coaches, the human response to the new knowledges spat out by artificial intelligences is real. Recipes that can hasten and heal, our thinking is shaped, and identities formed. Our emotional responses shaped through our words and artistic responses hold real cultural value. The human agent is present in the creation, the synthesis and the reaction, and Leach’s work brings the human agent greater visibility.
Of course I ran these archetypes through ChatGPT in an attempt to fast-track the writing of this article. Despite a predictable essay, it also concluded that Leach and Alford had developed a new methodology for perceiving artificial intelligence. A multifaceted exploration through which we can explore the perceptions of AI through five distinct lenses: Seducer, Coach, Oracle, Alchemist and Priest. Each lens offers a unique perspective on how we perceive and engage with artificial intelligence, uncovering its allure, predictive power, emotional resonance, potential for human enhancement, and the imperative for transparency and ethics. So I may claim this new methodology, as ways in which Leach’s work and our conversations with visitors evolve, scuffling in the continued dance between human and non-human knowledges.
Disclosure: The article title and text in bold were generated by ChatGPT by OpenAI. Other ideas and text were generated by the author. Dr Kristin Alford is a futurist and the Director of MOD. at the University of South Australia.
SAM LEACH, EMOTION HARVEST
14 SEPTEMBER – 7 OCTOBER, 2023
SULLIVAN+STRUMPF NAARM/MELBOURNE
