Oracle II (Superintelligence: Existential Risks, Mitigations and Outcomes) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Superintelligence future scenario simulator. An oracle and work of AI gamification made to simulate AI future scenarios using data from the latest research into AI existential risks, mitigations and impacts.
It is the second in a series of sculptural and digital Oracle future prediction simulators. The first (Oracle, 2020-1) was developed in response to future progress in artificial intelligence: A survey of expert opinion by the Future of Humanity Institute and gamifies the dates for the realisation of human-level machine intelligence, super-intelligence and the outcome for humanity.
Oracle II is made from a deconstructed one arm bandit made in the same year as the Dartmouth conference, considered to be the birthplace of AI (1956). The machine’s elaborately cast and illuminated fittings have been removed, revealing its base metal, hand-cranked mechanical and clockwork inner workings. In this, its most functional form, the machine shares its ancestry and aesthetic with earlier mechanical computing engines.
I am a British artist (b. Edinburgh) working at the intersection of art, science and anthropology. My broad research-based practice looks at humanity through a diachronic lens to explore how the evolution and accelerating forces of technological determinism, digitisation and artificial intelligence influence and shape contemporary societies and our humanity.
My multimedia works observe our transition to an age where we need to attest our humanity to machines, fight for our rights to data, and question our cultural legacy through acts of digital archeology. In the New Oracles series, I incorporate AI academic research into sculptural and digital future prediction simulators to gamify AI flight paths, societal risks and impacts. My other interests include the nature of time and environmental issues concerning the Anthropocene and future of species.
My work is inter-disciplinary, research-led and multi-media (medium agnostic). I often spend years researching, exploring and re-evaluating a subject's influence on past, present and future societies. This diachronic research directly informs my choice of medium and aesthetics. I mix carefully selected historical ready-mades with sculpted elements and digital technology (website interaction, digital simulators, curated feedback loops), to introduce new dimensions and amplify the change that has taken place over time. I work on multiple themes in parallel to encourage depth of material, inter-disciplinary thinking and new considerations.
