Bang and Lee’s film is presented in this exhibition. Hearing on AI Prophet, which tells the story of hearing an AI driver of an autonomous vehicle cause an accident. It tells the story and portrays the story and the world in which it takes place in tantalizing glimpses that encompass much of the contemporary debate surrounding AI. It is dream-like in tone, lyrically elliptical, beautiful, rich, endless interpretation. The story unfolds in a dystopian, Ballardian near-future of extinction and devastated man-made landscapes where AIs may have replaced all humans.
Never has a technology been so hotly debated yet embraced and so often hidden as AI. Described at the extremes as redemptive by techno-evangelists and apocalyptic by technocrats as both the savior and destroyer of humanity. The truth, as always, undoubtedly lies somewhere in the middle, but AI’s materialistic practices are currently shaping our lives and a number of problems, from its internal biases to its hollowing out of the labor force, Uncovered and debated.
In this background lies the work of Bang & Lee. Hearing on AI Prophet was created. A fictional AI runs as a congressional hearing in which three AI/human hybrid avatars represent the AI prophet and two other characters, an AI chairman and an AI agent, are responsible for presenting and deciding the case. The hearing has been called to consider an accident caused by the decision of Prophet, an AI that controls autonomous vehicles, which caused a car to crash into a tree and kill its passengers. There were minor injuries. A decision which should never have been made and which is clearly against his basic instructions. The hearing expands from this incident to an examination of AI and the film is full of ideas.
tone of Hearing on AI Prophet The whole thought is sometimes pleasant. For example, during the film AI Nabi quotes a French proverb, “Je fais le pantin, je tire les ficelles, mais une fois sur la scène, le spectacle est à lui” — which translates to “I put I thin, I stretch. Strings, but once on stage the show is his. As he speaks, the AI prophet is wistfully reflecting on his existence – separated from his creator and his role without fault. “Je fais le pantin” can also be translated as “playing the clown” and The AI reads the prophet as both a poor prophet and a sad clown. humanizes the human, reveals its suffering and its complexities. It is debatable whether this kind of humanization is a good thing, leading us to think more tenderly about something that is fundamental. is a series of algorithmic decisions trained on the labor of humans.
We live in a world that is increasingly shaped by AI. It dictates what we see online, predicts our responses, offers us more than it knows what we like and confirms our beliefs. It has material effects on traffic, the way we move through cities, the way populations are policed and prosecuted, and more. Much of its influence is behind the scenes, hidden and unsuspected. While its shortcomings are often downplayed by those who sell it on its merits, its biases and the effects of those biases have become abundantly clear. Hearing on AI Prophet It’s an extraordinarily powerful work that tackles a delicate issue, and it does so with great intelligence and thought. The film is designed to spark a debate among its audience on the work of an AI prophet and the story of hearing AI itself. These are the debates we need. They are critical, and it’s thrilling to experience a piece of art that takes them wholeheartedly.
This project is supported by ARKO’s “2023 Art and Technology Convergence Grant Program”.
An extended version of this text appears in Arts Council Korea’s ART&TECH column.
Lawrence Hill is an independent curator and doctoral researcher at the University of Sussex in the UK, looking at curatorial activism. He was previously director of the Brighton Digital Festival.