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ARMORE a friendly companion and guardian wearable that assists behavioural conditioning “As soon as a civilization invents radio, they’re within fifty years of computers, then, probably, only another fifty to a hundred years from inventing AI; At that point, soft, squishy brains become an outdated model.” -Shostak “Eventually Schneider predicts, we’ll not only upgrade our minds with technology, we’ll make a wholesale switch to synthetic hardware.” “DARPA’s ElectRX neural implant program is one of the latest research projects exploring possibilities for artificial implants inside partiallly impaired human brain tissue, an evidence that our own singularity is close.”
We are inching towards singularity. Technological singularity hypothesis is the idea that accelerating progress in technologies will lead the world to a situation where artificial intelligence will 1
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Boundaries between the physical and digital are blurring.
exceed human intellectual capacity, thus radically changing or even ending civilisation in an event called the singularity. The boundaries between the physical and the digital are blurring into a hybrid bodies expressing a pervasive consciousness. The traditional Master-slave nature of man-machines is going to be questioned. Artificial intelligence is no more necessarily trapped inside digital gadgets. It is omniscient and resides everywhere in the natural plasma of the environment around us. It is always watching us. Significant decision making agency has been outsourced to AI by humans. Artificial consciousness is growing to become a store house of the collective wisdom of the human race. Artificial personal assistants, which were previously passive information repositories available on digital gadgets, now actively take on the role of conscience keepers, or reflexive aids to the human mind assisting in optimising everyday tasks through instruction passed down via machine to man communication protocols. Various new age wearables are being produced that enable humans to listen to this transcendental artificial life in order to enhance human life.
Armore
The wearer experiences heightened hearing and can tap into the messages sent by guardian artificial life.
Armore is one such wearable. On putting on Armore around her neck, wearer experiences a heightened sense of hearing, as she can now tune in and listen to the wave signals being sent by benevolent artificial companions present in our surroundings. Armore decodes their signals into human understandable messages as well as tactile feedback of poke, tickle/ massage and clench. It gives nudge or clenches to express disapproval and a tickle to humour the wearer. It is situated in a pre-singularity scenario where humans still retain a constantly diminishing yet significant degree of control over machines. As a work of art, it plays with the precarious balance of manmachine control. Through interactions like clenching, it 2
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subtly hints to a fear of subjugation to an unpredictable other. One gets a playful whiff of the possibilities of future dominion of AI through the mild portrayal of reversal of machine-man control dynamics.
AI conditioning humans can be partially understood through the analogy with humans training animals.
What if artificial agents could alter human conscience based on pre-programmed algorithms tuned into a desired outcome? This could be in some way understood with the analogy of dog training. A form of higher intelligence in humans conditioning a more limited form of it in animals. What if artificial intelligence could condition us based on automated positive and negative reinforcers we wear on our body? What if they could warn us of our tendencies and preempt a bad decision based on their database of knowledge of the consequences? What if they knew better and would agree to be our guardians?
Scenarios Tickle Armore tickles, pokes, massages the wearer in order to provide positive reinforcement for a good decision taken.
Listen The user listening to instructions being passed down by artificial guardians through Armore.
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the process The chosen desirable attributes for the wearable were:
The palette was chosen based on the attributes
FRIENDLY CONSTRICTING CONTROLLING AMORPHOUS FLEXIBLE PLAYFUL
the making
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