Artists and supercomputers: Creative collaborations in AI

What's it like to be a mobile phone or to attach a wind sensor to a neural network? Jeff Thompson outlines several recent creative projects that push the tools of AI in new directions. Part technical discussion and part case study for embedding artists in technical institutions, this talk explores the ways that artists and scientists can collaborate to expand the ways that AI can be used.

What’s it like to be a mobile phone? What can we learn about American rental architecture from Craigslist? What’s it like for wind to blow through language encoded in a neural network? These aren’t the type of questions that scientists and engineers are likely to ask. As an artist, Jeff Thompson uses artificial intelligence to explore these kinds of ideas. Too often, we see the worlds of science and art as being opposite, but collaborations between artificial intelligence researchers and the arts can push tools and approaches into new territories and can result in tangible products and technical ideas. Jeff outlines several recent creative projects created while an artist in residence at Bell Labs and the Computer Laboratory at University of Cambridge that push the tools of artificial intelligence in new directions. Part technical discussion of specific creative projects and part case study for embedding artists in technical institutions, this talk explores the ways that artists, scientists, and engineers can collaborate to create paradigm shifts in AI.