AI Authority of Art
Are we ready to cast our votes for artificial intelligence and let a chatbot represent us? Could the world be governed more wisely under the stewardship of AI? What will happen when artificial intelligence takes its seat at the negotiating table? The creators of the exhibition envision a future in which humans and machines jointly negotiate our shared reality. Is this still a utopia? Art has the unique power to shape the imagination – and artists do not hesitate to use it.
This exhibition engages critically with the global discourse surrounding the role of artificial intelligence in society, set against the backdrop of a perceptible crisis in democratic systems. It proposes an alternative vision for politics and reconsiders the principles underpinning contemporary majority rule.
AI Authority of Art is as an artistic project in the form of a multi-channel, interactive audiovisual installation, which invites viewers to participate in a debate between two virtual politicians: Wiktoria Cukt 2.0 and Leader Lars. Harnessing cutting-edge AI technologies, the exhibition offers a space not merely for observation but for active participation in dialogue with the chatbots. Through interactive stations and telephone headset installations, the audience can pose questions and receive real-time responses created by the algorithms animating these virtual figures. The installation perpetually generates an exchange of ideas and perspectives, transforming the exhibition into a dynamic arena where audience engagement is not only welcomed but essential.
As the artists participating in the exhibition write, “AI Authority of Art is an artistic and social experiment that raises questions about political representation in the technological age. It combines the legacy of early net art experiments with the contemporary perils and promises of artificial intelligence. It is an attempt to understand and envision a new paradigm for collaboration between humans and machines within the public sphere.”
Wiktoria Cukt 2.0 is an autonomous, algorithmic entity – a presidential bot and an independent political system heralding the post-human epoch. Her reactivation, twenty-four years after the Polish presidential elections of 2000, revives the world’s first virtual politician, originally conceived by the artistic collective C.U.K.T. (Rafał Ewertowski, Robert Mikołaj Jurkowski, Artur Kozdrowski, Jacek Niegoda, Maciej Sienkiewicz, and Piotr Wyrzykowski) as Wiktoria Cukt, a candidate for the highest office.
Lars emerged in 2022 as a chatbot trained on large language models to synthesize the political views of more than two hundred niche parties founded in Denmark since 1970, which have failed to enter parliament due to insufficient electoral support. As such, he embodies the voice of voters left without representation and stands at the centre of the Danish Synthetic Party, established for the 2022 parliamentary elections by the artistic group Computer Lars and the technology hub MindFuture. Computer Lars has also initiated a global network for virtual politicians; this spring, the first Synthetic Summit was held in Aarhus, Denmark, attended by nine AI-led parties from around the world.
A meeting with politicians-bots running for president or leading artificial intelligence parties still seems like a utopian scenario lifted from the script of a Black Mirror episode. Yet it is precisely the realm of art, with its capacity to simulate specific situations, that offers fertile ground for such experiments and artistic provocations. Placed within public space, such interventions engage audiences, raise questions, spark debate, and have the potential to shape social attitudes.
The exhibition serves as a point of departure for reflections on the pervasiveness of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and the ways in which these new tools may transform the landscape of politics. The experiences of recent years have laid bare the direct connection between social media algorithms and the crisis of democratic institutions, not least through their control over the flow of information across communication platforms.
“There was Homo sapiens; now Homo algorithmus is coming,” remarked Michał Kosiński, a professor at Stanford University, in an interview. Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly sophisticated instrument. It inspires high hopes while simultaneously provoking growing apprehension. Its influence, already significant, is expanding rapidly across every sphere of human existence, including politics, posing one of the central challenges to contemporary democracy.
- Curator
- Ewa Gorządek
