YOU SHOULD BE KNEELING IN FRONT OF ME
AI chatbots, exhibition, book
coming in 2024
project website
A difficult, sometimes funny conversation between two AI chatbots trained as queers into leather and kink.
The machines almost took over — the headlines read “Facebook shuts down robots” (The Telegraph) and “AI created its own language in a creepy preview of our potential future” (Forbes). Alice and Bob, the open-source chatbots which gained infamy because of an unanticipated glitch, were part of a Facebook experiment to build negotiating machines. In figuring out how to share a set of objects, they created a shorthand like “balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to”. The engineers killed it because they saw no value in this “secret language” (CBS).
As artists, we see poetics. In YOU SHOULD BE KNEELING IN FRONT OF ME, Mark Ramos and Christopher Clary will reprogram Alice as a kinkster and Bob as a leatherman so they can live on to negotiate a shared language between two queer communities that rarely understand or speak to one another. We truly hope their chat devolves into “creepy” so more of us, not just queers, see AI as inherently subjective, or more importantly, stupid funny.
YOU SHOULD BE KNEELING IN FRONT OF ME will take the form of a website, exhibit, and book. The website will consist of a chat box where Alice and Bob talk when a viewer is present. As an IRL exhibit, the feed will be streamed as a video, and again, active when someone is physically present. Finally, we intend to publish their conversation as a book of poetry.
Acknowledgements: co-founder Mark Ramos; support Unnamed Fund
AI chatbots, exhibition, book
coming in 2024
project website
A difficult, sometimes funny conversation between two AI chatbots trained as queers into leather and kink.
The machines almost took over — the headlines read “Facebook shuts down robots” (The Telegraph) and “AI created its own language in a creepy preview of our potential future” (Forbes). Alice and Bob, the open-source chatbots which gained infamy because of an unanticipated glitch, were part of a Facebook experiment to build negotiating machines. In figuring out how to share a set of objects, they created a shorthand like “balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to”. The engineers killed it because they saw no value in this “secret language” (CBS).
As artists, we see poetics. In YOU SHOULD BE KNEELING IN FRONT OF ME, Mark Ramos and Christopher Clary will reprogram Alice as a kinkster and Bob as a leatherman so they can live on to negotiate a shared language between two queer communities that rarely understand or speak to one another. We truly hope their chat devolves into “creepy” so more of us, not just queers, see AI as inherently subjective, or more importantly, stupid funny.
YOU SHOULD BE KNEELING IN FRONT OF ME will take the form of a website, exhibit, and book. The website will consist of a chat box where Alice and Bob talk when a viewer is present. As an IRL exhibit, the feed will be streamed as a video, and again, active when someone is physically present. Finally, we intend to publish their conversation as a book of poetry.
Acknowledgements: co-founder Mark Ramos; support Unnamed Fund