Art is based on life, and AI doesn't have one. That's just one reason why the art community is uniquely well-positioned to show us the limitations of AI
There's no need to read a lengthy academic paper to understand the shortcomings of artificial intelligence. You can just look to the work of Berlin performance artist Simon Weckert.
In 2020, Weckert tricked Google Maps by creating a virtual traffic jam. He gathered 99 smartphones and piled them into a red wagon, then walked back and forth for hours on a street in Berlin, which falsely signalled gridlock. Within an hour, the typically bustling motorway became desolate as Google re-routed commuters to other routes to avoid the “congestion.”
Without tech-speak or algorithmic adjustments, the artist elegantly communicated the complex technological limitations of technology. Weckert's work speaks to the long history of excellence in artists’ critique of society.
The arts community has the ability to connect to the wider public in a way many academics and so-called tech experts struggle. Amid the AI revolution, artists are uniquely well-positioned to communicate the impacts and shortcomings of AI on our lives—just as Weckert did with his “Google Maps Hack”.
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What artists can do
What human-driven art does, and can do, is help us all better question and critically think about the limitations of AI.
In Weckert's example, it was his human observational skills of a protest that led him to make connections about an otherwise notoriously opaque technology: During the protest, a traffic jam was signalled. Weckert wondered whether it was the phones in the protester's pockets that led to inaccuracy — and decided to make an artistic expression to illustrate this observation.
The arts have a long history of doing this—from Pablo Picasso, who viewed “art as a powerful tool for societal reform and used his works to confront and challenge prevailing political and social conditions”; to Banksy, who uses street art to challenge socio-political norms; to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose political critiques have led to social change in China and globally. What these artists do, which AI cannot, is integrate concepts, ideas and experiences—and draw together complexity and uncertainty—in order to challenge us to see a different perspective.
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