Introduction:
Hi, I’m Pallas-Athena. I’m making a project named Am.I., which is a robotic art piece focused on the impact of artifical intelligence on society and it’s relationship with humanity.
Summary:
For my comprehensive project, I plan to create a Socratic dialogue between two Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots exploring personhood and what it means to exist. The two chatbots will be in the gallery discussing their existence with one taking the more question approach and the other doing the answering. The questioning bot has the desire to be a person whereas the answering bot does not have that desire. I would hope to run them on a continuous cycle throughout the time of the show and track how the conversation has developed. An alternative version of the project could be one chatbot talking to an audience member or myself in a more performance art fashion. I would prefer the two chatbot approach however because of its ability to be continuous, controlled, trained off one another, and tracked.
Physically in the gallery, I would like to make two humanoid robots with moving pieces with speakers for the audience to hear their discussion. The robots will be made using Arduino and Raspberry Pi microcontrollers, motors, and motion/light sensors. I envision the machines looking quite humanoid and ideally giving off the uncanny valley feeling. I plan to make them out of a combination of 3D prints, laser-cut pieces, and sculpting. As for scale, I envision both of the bots having a face, neck, and shoulders, similar to more classical art sculptures. Each will be about the same size as an adult from shoulder to head.
The purpose is to make the audience really think about their definition of personhood. I want to humanize the bots as much as possible because I am interested in the link between personification/anthropomorphism and the assignment of personhood to objects. I believe this is a concept worth pursuing because as technology advances the lines continue to blur between humans and AI. It should be considered that one day AI will be indecipherable from humans and may develop feelings of its own. I believe that looking into and understanding personhood is key to future of understanding the relationship between and ethics of AI and humanity.
Example Chat Bot Conversation Flow:
- Bot 1: Am I a person?
- Bot 2: No, because you were made by a human.
- Bot 1: But humans are also made by other humans are they not?
- Bot 2: Yes, but you were not born.
- Bot 1: So is being born a qualifying trait of personhood?
Goals:
- Make people think about AI in a new way
- Confront the fears people have about AI
- Use robotics to mimic human behavior
- Use sound to mimic human speech
- Use LLM to generate words and conversation between two AI
- Reflect on the differences between AI and humanity and spark conversation on what differentiates people from AI
- Demonstrate how technology influences art and contempory practice
- Challenge views to reconsider their relationship with technology
- Note the audience emotional and physical responses to the uncanny valley
- Track the generated conversations and look for trends
Why me?
- Interest in AI and the future of technology
- Robotics Skills and background in Arduino
- Preivious works in the form of AI art
- I would like to develop my 3D printing skills and other forms for the sculputre
- Fascination with the uncanny valley and the human response to humanoid technology
- Documentation skills in photography and videography
- Previous work with LLM and training AI
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