Entering a small, dark room, you are thrown into a 1980s setting. On the screen of a retro computer, neon green letters prompt you to answer a series of very personal questions. What did your childhood bedroom look like? What do you want to accomplish in your life? The machine tries to know your memories and your aspirations, in order to better captivate you later.
This is the preamble to the work Tulpamancerpresented at the Phi Center as part of the exhibition Coded dreams from Wednesday. Visitors are then invited to put on a virtual reality headset. They are drawn into a tailor-made story created in real time by artificial intelligence (AI). The result is a dreamlike – and slightly psychedelic – journey in three dimensions, guided by a kind of apostle of personal growth. “Know that the universe unfolds with possibilities, conspiring to bring forth the perfect conditions when destiny desires,” narrated the soft voice of the machine, named Tulpato our journalist.
Matthew Niederhauser, one of the two New York artists behind the work, admits that the experience can be confusing. It’s even intentional. “There are people who come out in tears because they were so moved. Other people feel uncomfortable. When it’s weird, it makes you wonder about the reasons for this discomfort,” he reports.
Sparking conversations and reflections on how artificial intelligence works is what Mr. Niederhauser and his colleague Marc Da Costa want to do above all. The AI thus appears with its strengths and its flaws, clumsy despite its benevolent intentions. It certainly wouldn’t pass the Turing test. In other words, the machine would have great difficulty convincing us that it is human. But the work gives a glimpse of what could await us with the refined and widespread use of this kind of technology that imitates human behavior.
From kindness to manipulation
There is of course a useful scope for AI… and even therapeutic! “Our work is not a substitute for therapy,” Mr. Niederhauser jokes. But there are people who open up more to an AI than to a human, because they don’t feel judged. »
The creators instructed the artificial intelligence of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, on how to interpret viewers’ responses and communicate with them. Since they wanted the experience to be positive, they trained her to generate pleasant and spiritual content from their words.
“But we could also tell her to be mean and insult you,” adds Mr. Niederhauser. Citizens must therefore realize how AI can be used against them, he believes. “It can be highly manipulative. »
“The crazy thing is that companies like Meta, Alphabet (Google) and Amazon have a lot of information about you, a lot more than six questions. Soon, you will be able to have a personal assistant who knows your ten years of email history,” says the man who has always been fascinated by digital technologies. He was dismantling computers at age eight and programming artificial intelligence 25 years ago. He then worked as an artist in photography, video, virtual reality and interactive arts.
Distorted myths
In addition to the intimate experience of TulpamancerMr. Niederhauser and Mr. Da Costa offer a collective work entitled The Golden Key. Fanciful images are projected on three large screens, accompanied by narration in French. To create these endlessly linked stories, the AI draws from a repertoire of tens of thousands of tales and illustrations from multiple countries and eras.
Viewers are asked to contribute to the story by suggesting their own themes and phrases to the digital storyteller. When passing the Dutytheir additions gave rise to funny scenes, such as giant bagels floating in a lake in front of a medieval village supposed to represent Montreal. By paying attention to the narrative, we also notice that the stories are eccentric and difficult to follow. Here too, the limits of AI are far from hidden.
This is a Canadian premiere for these two works. They were previously presented at the South by Southwest festival in Texas in 2024, where The Golden Key won a jury prize. Tulpamancer was also selected for the Venice International Film Festival in 2023.
