“A phantom is roaming around the world, visible at certain points, but mostly hidden from plain sight, moving stealthily into every area of life and work, and into every private recess. It comes in the guise of the epitome of progress, promising increased efficiency and profit to some, absolute control and power to certain others, and commodities to the masses. Some see it as the harbinger of doom for humankind, a Pandora’s box of self-destruction now opened and impossible to close again. Artists are attracted by this phantom, begin exploring its profoundly alien behavior, and experience its invasion of even the most exclusive realms of artistic creation, so far deemed to be one of the last reserves of what makes humans human. It sprang from the research laboratories of the digital transformation and quickly roused the interest of those who have the power and the means and who can comfortably act beyond public control. This phantom, after all, is no phantom, but a stark reality with phantom-like behavior, best known by a name, which again is part of the smoke screen frequently surrounding it: ‘AI’–short for: Artificial Intelligence.”
From: Andreas J. Hirsch, Five Preliminary Notes on the Practice of AI and Art, first published in: Gerfried Stocker, Markus Jandl, Andreas J. Hirsch (eds.), The Practice of Art and AI, Ars Electronica / European ARTificial Intelligence Lab / Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2021
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