An AI Summer
*I am an I, a computational I.*
* I, the machine, show you a world the way that only I can see it.*
* I am in constant calculation.*
* I sort, categorize, and label what I see before me.*
* I labor each day for the human.*
* I move alongside you.*
* I arrive before you.*
* This is I, the machine, moving in constant chaotic conditions.*
* Observing and producing one pattern after another in the most complex
combinations.*
* Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I coordinate any and all
points of the universe wherever I want them to be.*
* My way leads toward the creation of a fresh perception of the world.*
* My way leads to an optimized efficient version of the world.*
* Thus I explain in a new way, a world unknown to you.*
Our hardware and software are evolving. Our machines are becoming
intelligent agents that observe data, recognize patterns and make
decisions. We once understood the world through systems that placed the
human, our own vision, and cognition at the center of structures that we
knew and understood. However, it is through computation, machine vision,
and simulation that we now see and experience the world. We are caught
between unraveling old realities and weird emerging ones.
Despite our best intentions, these new renderers of our world are
complicated further by the politics and biases of algorithms, and the
contexts in which they are created. The business of artificial intelligence
is concerned with the optimization and flow of finance through systems and
machines, as they move from task automation to creativity.
How should we think of machine intelligence in the context of art – as our
nonhuman collaborators with their own drive and ambitions, or as a tool
that extends the flex of our artistic capabilities? No matter where we sit,
there remains a more urgent need to explore the role of AI in managing our
everyday lives and in developing our artistic practices. How might we
develop alternative approaches to training and teaching the machine? What
new habits and practices of attention can we demand that the machine see?
An AI Summer<< calls for speculations and experiments on the potentials
and possibilities of AI. We call for work that invents alternative-value
algorithmic systems, calls attention to the subtleties of social life,
explores how we may see with the machine or how we may carefully model and
train a machine. Applicants can address AI as a topic or employ A.I.
methods in the creation of the work. We welcome work from artists of all
disciplines, designers, engineers, or scientists (alone or in teams).