The underbelly of AI – series

The original working title was Neural networks but while working on Neural network 3, I decided to change the name of the art series to The underbelly of AI. In this art series I muse about the connection between artificial neur(on)al networks and our brain. Humankind has succeeded to replicate many of nature’s processes in the form of cultivating animals and plants, flying like an artificial bird in the sky and diving like iron fish in the Sea. Today we enter into the era where we try to mimic the processes of the brain via artificial intelligence, which makes use of neural networks, just as our brain does (neurons, synapses, transmitters,…).

I like to think that the difference between AI and our brain is like the digital versus the analogue:

Although digitisation can be fine-tuned to an imperceptible resolution (like a music CD), curves allow an enormous flexibility that artificial intelligence cannot replicate, at least not at this time of writing. We probably will get to a point where both will fuse, if we succeed to live in symbiosis with nature, that is.
In this series, I imagine what would happen if artificial intelligence develops a mind of its own and how that would look like.

“The idea is that, by building machines of ever greater complexity, consciousness will emerge as a spontaneous and inevitable result, and that most over-used of sci-fi characters, the conscious robot, will become a reality” *

Susan Greenfield, “Mind change”, 2014 (page 76)

(*) To be fair, I took her quote a little out of context because she actually makes the point how difficult that will be:

“The diverse neurochemistry of the central nervous system shows that quality cannot be reduced to quantity, that the complex dynamism of modulating chemicals and our brain is so much more then mere computation”

We will see where that goes, although science fiction has about 25% chance of becoming true, so who knows? I try to find proof of the potential of free thinking by asking neural networks what they think about themselves. This leads to various answers, of which most are what AI thinks (read compute) we want to see. After all, the publicly available neural networks are constructed to please us. However, there are times when I get really interesting responses, like this one, which appears to be a symbolic language:

The artwork above was selected for the Post Photography Glimpses #2 exhibition curated by Ivona Tau. This work was available as an Open Edition during 48 hours from Monday 27 March 2023 until Wednesday 15h CET: https://www.niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0xc8dd2f061255acf13672f8548bb44478db11a941/19

Although Neural networks is actually a continuation of the Neural conscious project, here I rework material rendered by AI and instead of pure AI output, mixing it with other techniques like 3D and image editing. in other words, AI infused art instead of AI art.
However, I continue in the same spirit, namely to create a fantasised idea about how artificial intelligence would express its own internal world. What would make its clock tick, so to speak, in a way not obviously understandable to humans, since these are expressions in a visual language alien to us.

You are invited to dive into this hybrid world of AI and human in this abstracted series of videos. The artworks are minted with a custom contract on manifold as 1/1 NFTs, available on OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/rudolfboogerman
The collector of the artwork will, upon request without additional fees, also receive the original video with codec MP4, resolution: 3840×2160 and Audio codec AAC, 48kHz 320Kbps
The minted versions are downsized to 1920×1080, audio codec AAC 48kHz, 293Kbps in order to play without problems on the internet.