Janaki Vivrekar's QuarantineAI
BCNM alum Janaki Vivrekar was recently interviewed by Fabiana Jung from the Life in Quarantine Project on Vivrekar's Quarantined AI project! This amazing project was inspired by one of our History and Theory of New Media Lectures with Christiane Paul!
From the interview:
In my worldview, this COVID-19 quarantine period has changed our living contexts in different ways for everyone. So for myself and for many others, the past few months have involved living mostly indoors and being really cautious when we step outside of our living quarters. This led me to question how our relationship with the outdoor world would evolve after quarantining indoors for several months, especially at the beginning of this quarantine period when there was so much uncertainty about how long the quarantine would last since things were changing so quickly. Now that we’re using technology so heavily to stay connected with each other, I was curious about how our machines are “experiencing” the quarantine along with us. This led me to think about how we might, in particular, examine the capacities and limitations of artificial intelligence to creatively parallel this dialogue between our quarantined present and our hopeful future…I only started to think more deeply about this project after I attended a talk at the Berkeley Center for New Media on April 16, 2020, about how advancements in AI and robotics have been fueled by corporations and venture capital, and that these very advancements challenge our assumptions about the distinctions between humans and machines.
Read the rest of the interview and learn more about Vivrekar's work here!