AI at the CCCB

There’s an exhibition on Artificial Intelligence at the moment at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), which we visited in the week. I can’t pretend to understand how it all works but I do know it cost me my job last year. A modicum of schadenfreude therefore when my former boss recently told me our old employer had lost 30% market value after sacking our editorial team. Perhaps the humanoids aren’t vanquished quite yet..

I’ve been following the evolution of AI with interest over the last year, trying to work out where humans fit into this brave new world, a trend predicted here with laser guided accuracy by Isaac Asimov in 1982. Even the coders could soon become obsolete. Many wider aspects of Open AI are absolutely terrifying, not least the potential for malevolent forces to fabricate visual evidence with very scary implications for freedom, democracy, truth, tyranny… and with an instant reach early pioneer of photo manipulation, former Soviet leader Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, could only drool at.

The CCCB exhibition didn’t really go too deep on what all this means. There were syncopated sound listening stations, a fake Obama and undead JFK giving speeches, shadow mime opportunities with responsive images, old film footage of Garry Kasparov playing chess against the Deep Blue computer, ethical discussions about facial profiling and glimpses of a world which imagined not only Artificial Intelligence but Artificial Life. And something about Massive Attack’s DNA.

I find it all terrifying and altogether more real than the prophesies of the strange Doomsday Cult who took over the French town of Bugarac in 2012 convinced it was the only place that would survive Judgement Day. Then again, maybe it won’t be too long before we’re all fleeing to the Pyrenees..