Who is
Artificial Intelligence？

The images, animations, and voice-overs

in the project are all generated by AI.

In this dialogue game, there is a human and another AI set up as the philosopher Borges, who is engaged in a discussion about the novel The Circular Ruins. The viewer is invited to guess who is the AI after watching a two-minute video. As a result of the embedded plot and Turing Test-like setting, the story presents in a metaphorical way.

On the one hand, the wizard and the teenager created by the wizard allude to the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, both are convinced in their conversations that they are real human beings, and this mutual test is like a machine trying to convince someone that "I am a real person" and a human trying to prove to himself that "I'm not a robot ". AI and humans influence and shape each other.

2022.12

Background and Inspiration

#About Artificial Intelligence

The topic of artificial intelligence has been on the rise lately, and while the heated debate on whether AI painting will replace painters is still going on, everyone is soon talking about how chatGPT can respond to people. ai technology has not only entered the public eye, but has even become a topic of after-dinner conversation. I received several messages in a matter of days about whether AI would replace themselves, with one book writer saying that he might not have to write stories anymore and that AI could do it for him. A programmer told me he hoped that AI would replace him in writing code. I had to respond to these flirtations by saying that AI has been drawing better than me for a long time, and that I would soon be out of a job.

# A novel about Borges

#Metaphors in the story

Humans have created ai and are increasingly dependent on them in their lives, emotionally, just as the wizard created the dreaming teenager. ai development has in turn given rise to unprecedented humanistic anxiety. ai painting has forced people to consider whether ai art is art, or even to re-examine what art really is. ai chatting has made people think about what intellectual skills are, and even about what human consciousness is.

The AI topic is super popular because there are so many underlying issues chasing, nagging, and enveloping people behind it.

How the project progressed

Video Plot Setting

Ai generates image visual tests

Video links

Exhibition site

Feedback from viewers

#On the first day of testing, six people thought women were AI and 12 thought men were AI. some also speculated that both could be AI.

Some of the comments are as follows:

Blind guess for the male. Because it feels like the male speaks a bit raw (not the voice)

The female feels a little more logical in her speech?

I think it's the female is AI 🤔 because it feels like a lot of the male questions and answers are guided by emotions and subjective feelings, and it seems like it's really hard for real authors in general to think of their own work at once? Only ai's are used to this kind of "information matching" mindset, whereas humans are better at processing information in real time contexts.

It feels like the male is AI because it feels like the male side is gathering more information in order to learn the world view and the line of questions asked is a bit more concrete and basic for that matter.

I'm guessing male because the answers given by the male would be indifferently juxtaposed, without the logical linking words that one would normally give, using mostly short simple sentences, without boredom, and always answering truthfully. There was also no mockery or anxiety at the end of the self-evidence section that one would normally expect.

Feels more like male is AI! It's a lot like the kind of ai software I talk to because the answers make sense and it doesn't feel like humans are that patient (maybe because I'm into)

How do I feel like it could be both. If I have to pick just one side，I guess male because there are more logic holes? But the man asking a lot of questions there kinda feels surprising ....

It feels like the male voice might be human? There are more words with question marks and it feels like if there is a question raised there is probably thinking about it

I think the male is ai because it's the female voice that dominates everything from the beginning. I don't rule out the possibility that the ai could dominate the human, but for now, in my perception, the human dominates everything.

Well - judging from the text at the start the male voice is the AI. Actually I kinda get the feeling that they’re both AI? Lol

I actually kind of missed it, I think the males are AI but not sure if the females are. I judge on the basis of whether the logic and thought process of the speech is human or not, and human responses can be emotional, emotional and jumbled. But AI words are cold, perfect and designed to be condescending. Male AI words I find to be very set, formulaic and perfect in speech. The female's words I'm not so sure about, because I feel like she has questioned whether the male is an AI, and she has given some basis for speculation, suggesting that she is thinking, that she is a living, breathing human being.

In the first half when the ‘teenager’ tried to convince himself that emotions experienced in a dream are still real I thought this one for sure is Not the ai.

In the second half though the male ‘Borges’ was saying some suspicious things😃 The ai is the male!When the female was trying to debunk robot Borges he said something like "Of course it's me, only I could have written stories like this." Strange thing to say for an author. I've never read Borges but based off the little roleplay it seemed very out of character haha

Isn't it revealed at the end? The female accuses the male of not knowing his own story?

Themes explored

In the video, the AI plays the role of the created, the "teenager", asking the wizard "why did you create me."

The argument over who is the "real Borges" and the woman's comment that "you're imitating me" mimic recent controversies in AI: whether AI is infringing and whether AI art should be boycotted.

Secondly, the work uses nested plots and inferential settings, and invites the viewer to guess who the AI is; this is a Turing Test-esque exercise that seeks to raise questions about the relationship between humans and AI.

I went ahead and gave the AI the setting that he was the philosopher Borges. This follows the example of the movie Blade Runner, where the bionic man is implanted with memories of his childhood that do not belong to him. This implantation would make them believe their own settings right from the start, and that's how my AI would blurt out, "I am Borges." "The AI is convinced of its own identity.

But while humans are constantly detecting the identity of AI, AI in turn can detect humans. It's like the "I'm not a robot" verification that we often get online. We also need to prove our identity to the AI. In the future, as AI becomes more intelligent and cunning, it may become increasingly difficult to prove our so-called 'humanity' in conversations with AI, which can feel like staring into an abyss. People and AI are constantly influencing and shaping each other.

Appendices

-The shortcomings of the work and reflections on the limitations of AI

#The problem of interrupted animated content

(limitations of AI animation)

The images and animation parts of this project were all generated by the AI platform Disco Difussion. It can be perceived as having several problems in the following areas.

1Ai is difficult to draw humans and especially human faces. Even with the inclusion of the keywords wizard and teenager in the prompts.

2 It is currently very difficult to render a full Ai animation. For example, I have tried to write a description of 30 consecutive prompts (an animation sequence of 2500 frames), but there are frequent breaks and restarts in the middle of the rendering process, so it is impossible to create a one-shot animation.

3 It is difficult to control the image. Even if you set the AI to use a certain angle or element or scene, the AI still generates random images. Inevitably, the AI generates clips that don't work at all sometimes.

#The problem of the lack of logic in the content of the dialogue

(limitations of AI chat)

-The Borges AI I created, although it was given philosophical characteristics and occasionally had some surprising words to say. But it is still passive, difficult to contextualise, and conservative and stereotypical.

-Even though a lot of people are currently talking about how effective and communicative Chat bot like GPT3 and ChatGPT is, it is still far less 'intelligent' than it is made out to be. As Lan Bogost says: "Perhaps ChatGPT and the technologies that underlie it are less about persuasive writing and more about superb bullshitting. 3". Even though it is already imitating humans, the undeniable point is that it does not understand the text. He is merely playing with, retrieving and transforming questions.

Conclusion

Even if what AI does is as human as it can be, it can still be discerned and looked for shortcomings.

Even if the output produced by AI is surprising, many synthetic pastiches are still full of flaws.

AI emerged to complement human capabilities rather than compete with and replace us.

Just as the advent of photography did not make painting die outright, and just as the superiority of AlphaGo did not make everyone stop playing chess, AI painting will not replace artists, and AI chatbots will not replace human work. Even if their emergence does have a huge impact and influence on various fields, they are just models trained from large amounts of data, and they can only collect and replicate what people have already done. They need people to make sure they run and perform.

It's still very far from AI being gods. Rather than replacing, they simply offer the possibility of a new kind of collaboration.