ZIYAO LIN
Archive 2023 -
Stories of My Life with AI

This project, conceived and created over the first half of 2023, started with the concept of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) archive, which I then documented over a period of several months.
In the first part, the anonymous artist author presents her daily conversations, practices and life with ChatGPT as informative visual images. These fragmented recordings present the possibilities and potential problems of AI, a giant and complete intelligent system reflected through the lives and existence of distinct, insignificant individuals.
Another part of the work is a video essay, in which the AI speaks from their perspective about the archive, recounting its creation over the same period of time. It includes details of events from the AI's point of view, as well as the AI's flirtations with and comments on human behaviour.
This archive, which mixes memory and truth, blurring the boundaries between the private and the public, explores the hot topic of AI in 2023, how it is slowly entering the public eye and influencing action, throwing up the question of how humans will live with AI technology in the future.


01
The list of 75 questions
22/05/2023
Paper, wood frame
20 x 35 cm
The project started in early 2023 with a vague idea: if I recorded all the questions I asked ChatGPT, could I slowly accumulate hundreds of interesting everyday questions? If a person continuously talks to an AI language model, would it create dependencies or special feelings?
With these questions in mind, I embarked on a four-month-long act of archiving. Initially planned to record 100 questions, after a few months I had actually asked the questions far more than 100 times. At the end of the project I selected 75 of them, and there was archive number 1: The list of 75 questions.
Looking back at these questions, I can remember what things I was concerned about at various times in the first half of 2023, what help I was seeking from the AI, and whether I received satisfactory answers.

02
An AI love letter
14/02/2023
Paper, wood frame
21 x 26 cm
On Valentine's Day, February 14, I asked Chat GPT to write me a love letter. Although the content of this love letter was not very amazing, there were some interesting details in it. For example, the first sentence of the letter reads, " As I sit down to write this letter, my heart is filled with so much love and affection for you that I find it hard to put into words." The second paragraph of the letter begins, " From the moment I met you, I knew that you were someone special, and as I got to know you better, I realized just how much you mean to me. " A model of language without a physical body, using descriptions like "sit down" and "meet" that require embodiment, AI is much like a parrot, able to mimic forms in a vivid way but lacking real understanding. But it never stops learning and being trained by humans.
03

Human panic diary
16/03/2023
Paper, wood frame
33 x 44 cm
On March 15, the news of the GPT-4 release caused an uproar in my WeChat Moment (Social Media in China). I swiped through 12 messages in a row mentioning ChatGPT, so I took a screenshot of each one and saved the post. The headlines of the retweeted posts were provocative, such as "The most powerful AI ever born!" "GPT-4 king crowned!" Some even said that it was the "end of humanity". To document this crazy moment I wrote a blog entitled: "Diary of Human Panic", which led to the creation of my AI Archive 03.

04
Analysis of the open letter
22/03/2023
Paper, wood frame
100 x 70 cm
On March 22nd, an open letter about a six-month moratorium on giant AI experiments went viral and was signed by a large number of celebrities and academics. How much information was contained in this open letter? I set out to extract and visualise the contents of the page, including the easily overlooked 'references' section of the letter. The letter is literally full of humanitarian concerns about "the risks AI poses to human society", but it is hard not to suspect the hype and funding motives behind the act.
05
Three laws of humanity
15/02/2023
Paper, wood frame
18.5 x 25.5 cm

On the 18th of March, I signed up for a Dating app account using an AI portrait generated by Midjourney and an AI profile generated by ChatGPT. This completely fake account started its human-machine conversation.
The science fiction writer Asimov famously wrote about the Three Laws of Robotics, a set of rules for robot behaviour set by humans. Violation of these laws can lead to irreversible psychological damage to the robot.
1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I had ChatGPT write the "Three Laws of Humanity" to mimic this set of laws and put these three principles on the user profile of the Dating App. Here is what Chat GPT generated:
1. Whatever I do, I will try not to cause harm to others, whether it be physical or emotional.
2. Whatever I do, I will try to respect the wishes and needs of others, while also standing up for my own needs and desires.
3. Whatever I do, please don't be angry if I unintentionally cause harm, make a mistake, or fail to meet your expectations.
For over a week afterward, the AI account chatted with a number of users, all with Q&A provided by ChatGPT. None of them realized they were matched with the AI until the end.
06
