A pop-up art installation focusing on artificial intelligence and its “power to destroy and do good” wrapped up its first run in San Francisco this month, but the nonprofit that backs it plans to make the exhibition permanent.
The Misalignment Museum, which billed itself as an “art installation for the purpose of increasing knowledge about artificial intelligence,” had been on view in the Mission district since March. Some pieces remain on private display at the Salesforce Tower as the nonprofit strives to secure funding for its upcoming public opening.
“We hope to elevate public discourse and understanding of this powerful technology to inspire thoughtful collaboration, an appropriate regulatory environment, and progress toward a hopeful and vibrant future,” the project said. website reads.
Giacomo Miceli, So hold me mom. Courtesy of the Misalignment Museum
These works included Spammers by Neil Mendoza, a sculpture made with a Raspberry Pi, a single-board computer about the size of a credit card. The sculpt also uses spam boxes that have been modified to include arms that each control four keys on a keyboard.
“AI is increasingly being used to produce spammy content,” the exhibit notes read, adding that Spambots “collectively type prose that has been generated by a large language model based on deep learning, honed on a specially modified piggy version of Aldous Huxley’s The best of worlds.”
another job, Infinite talk by Giacomo Miceli, was created using machine learning and features German director Werner Herzog and Slovenian philosopher Slavo Žižek having an “endless discussion” using AI-generated models trained on publicly available recordings of the two men.
Eurypheus, Genesis: In the beginning was the word. Courtesy of Misalignment Museum.
“This project aims to raise awareness about the ease of use of real-speech tools, as this has huge implications on the media we consume and questions about the importance of authoritative sources, misuse of confidence and gullibility,” read the gallery’s notes.
The Misalignment Museum invited Pier Group artists Kevan Christiaens, Hillary Clark and Matthew Schultz – known for their monumental work in Burning Man – to create a sculpture for the exhibit. This work, paperclip hugwas made using over 15,000 paperclips and concrete, and was based on an original 72-foot-tall version that was set on fire during the festival in 2014.
The work was also inspired by the “Paperclip Maximizer” thought experiment on the ethics of AI, first portrayed by Nick Bostrom in 2003.
“It also seems perfectly possible to have a superintelligence whose only goal is something completely arbitrary, like making as many paperclips as possible, and which would resist with all its might any attempt to alter that goal,” Bostrom wrote. “For better or worse, artificial intellects don’t need to share our human motivational tendencies.”
Eurypheus, Gates to Hell Selfie Spot. Courtesy of the Misalignment Museum
Audrey Kim, curator of the Misalignment Museum, said Wired the project started about seven months ago – before the launch of ChatGPT sparked public concerns about chatbots and generative AI, Kim designed the exhibit to showcase dystopian lower-level plays along with higher-level plays optimists at the top level.
“It’s weird, because it’s such a terrifying subject,” Kim said, “but it makes me happy that people are interested.”
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