Month: October 2021

The AI Creation Meme

Beth Singler
A robot hand and a human hand reaching out with their fingertips towards each other

This blog post is based on Singler, B (2020) “The AI Creation Meme: A Case Study of the New Visibility of Religion in Artificial Intelligence Discourse” in Religions 2020, 11(5), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11050253

Few images are as recognisable or as frequently memed as Michelangelo’s Creazione di Adamo (Creation of Adam), a moment from his larger artwork that arches over the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. Two hands, fingers nearly touching, fingertip to fingertip, a heartbeat apart in the moment of divine creation. We have all seen it reproduced with fidelity to the original or remixed with other familiar pop-culture forms. We can find examples online of god squirting hand sanitiser into Adam’s hand for a Covid-era message. Or a Simpsons cartoon version with Homer as god, reaching out towards a golden remote control. Or George Lucas reaching out to Darth Vader. This creation moment is also reworked into other mediums: the image has been remade with paperclips, satsuma sections, or embroidered as a patch for jeans. Some people have tattooed the two hands nearly touching on their skin, bringing it into their bodies. The diversity of uses and re-uses of the Creation of Adam speak to its enduring cultural impact.

The creation of Adam by Michelangelo
Photography of Michelangelo’s fresco painting “The creation of Adam” which forms part of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling

My particular interest in the meme-ing of the Creation of Adam is because of its ‘AI Creation’ form, which I have studied by collecting a corpus of 79 indicative examples found online (Singler 2020a). As with some of the above examples, the focus is often narrowed to just the hands and forearms of the subjects. The representation of AI in my corpus came in two primary forms: an embodied robotic hand or a more ethereal, or abstract, ‘digital’ hand. The robotic hands were either jointed white metal and plastic hands or fluid metallic hands without joints – reminiscent of the liquid, shapeshifting, T-1000 model from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). In examples with digital hands, they were either formed with points of light or vector lines. The human hands in the AI Creation Meme also had characteristics in common: almost all were male and Caucasian in skin tone. Some might argue that this replicates how Michelangelo and his contemporaries envisaged Adam and the Abrahamic god. But if we can re-imagine these figures in Simpson’s yellow or satsuma orange, then there are intentional choices being made here about race, representation, and privilege.

The colour blue was also significant in my sample. Grieser’s work (2017) on the popularity of Blue Brains in neuroscience imagery, which applies an “aesthetics of religion” approach, was relevant to this aspect of the AI Creation Meme. She argues that such colour choices and their associations – for instance, blue with “seriousness and trustworthiness”, the celestial and heavenly, and its opposition to dark and muted colours and themes – “target the level of affective attitudes rather than content and arguments” (Grieser 2017, p260). Background imagery also targeted affective attitudes: cosmic backgrounds of galaxies and star systems, cityscapes with skyscrapers, walls of binary text, abstract shapes in patterns such as hexagons, keyboards, symbols representing the fields that employ AI, and more abstract shapes in the same blue colour palette. The more abstract examples were used in more philosophical spaces, while the more business-orientated meme remixes were found more often on business, policy, and technology-focused websites, suggesting active choice in aligning the specific AI Creation meme with the location in which it was used. These were frequently spaces commonly thought of as ‘secular’ – technology and business publications, business consultancy firms, blog posts about fintech, bitcoin, eCommerce, or the future of eCommerce, or the future of work. What then of the distinction between the religious and the secular?

That the original Creation of Adam is a religious image is without question – although its obviously specific to a specific view of a monotheistic god. As a part of the larger work in the Sistine chapel, it was intended to “introduce us to the world of revelation”, according to Pope John Paul II (1994). But such images are not merely broadcasting a message; meaning-making is an interactive event where the “spectator’s well of previous experiences” interplays with the object itself (Helmers 2004, p 65). When approaching an AI Creation Meme, we bring our own experiences and assumptions, including the cultural memory of the original form of the image and its message of monotheistic creation. This is obviously culturally specific, and we might think about what a religious AI Creation Meme from a non-monotheistic faith would look like, as well as who is being excluded in this imaginary of the creation of AI. But this particular artwork has had impact across the world. Even in the most remixed form, we know broadly who is meant to be the Creator and who is the Created, and that this moment is intended to be the very act of Creation.

Some of the AI Creation Memes even give greater emphasis to this moment, with the addition of a ‘spark of life’ between the human hand and the AI hand. The cultural narrative of the ‘spark of life’ likely begins with the scientific works of Luigi Galvani (1737 – 1789). He experimented with animating dead frogs’ legs with electricity and likely inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the 19th Century, the ‘spark of life’ then became a part of the account of the emergence of all life on earth from the ‘primordial soup’ of “ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity etc.” (Darwin 1871). Grieser also noted such sparks in her work on ‘Blue Brain’ imagery in neuroscience, arguing that such motifs can be seen as perpetuating the aesthetic forms of a “religious history of electricity”, which involves visualising conceptions of communication with the divine (Grieser 2017, p. 253).

Finding such aesthetics, informed by ideology, in what are commonly thought of as ‘secular’ spaces, problematises the distinction between the secular and the religious. In the face of solid evidence against a totalising secularisation and in favour of religious continuity and even flourishing, some interpretations of secularisation have instead focused on how religions have lost control over their religious symbols, rites, narratives, tropes and words. So, we find figures in AI discourse such as Ray Kurzweil being proclaimed ‘a Prophet’, or people online describing themselves as being “Blessed by the Algorithm” when having a particularly good day as a gig economy worker or a content producer, or in general (Singler 2020). These are the religious metaphors we also live by, to paraphrase Lakoff and Johnson (1980).

The virality of humour and memetic culture is also at play in the AI Creation Meme. I’ve mentioned some of the examples where the original Creation Meme is remixed with other pop culture elements, leading to absurdity (the satsuma creation meme is a new favourite of mine!). The AI Creation Meme is perhaps more ‘serious’ than these, but we might see the same kind of context-based humour being expressed through the incongruity of replacing Adam with an AI. Humour though can lead legitimation through a snowballing effect, as something that is initially flippant or humorous can become an object that is indicated towards in more serious discourse. I’ve previously made this argument in relation to New Religious Movements that emerge from jokes or parodies of religion (Singler 2014), but it is also applicable to religious imagery used in unexpected places that gets a conversation started or informs the aesthetics of an idea, such as AI.

The AI Creation meme also inspires thoughts of what is being created. The original Creation of Adam is about the origin of humanity. In the AI Creation Meme, we might be induced to think about the origins of post-humanity. And just as the original Creation of Adam leads us to think on fundamental existential questions, the AI Creation Meme partakes of posthumanism’s “repositioning of the human vis-à-vis various non-humans, such as animals, machines, gods, and demons” (Sikora 2010, p114), and it leads us into questions such as ‘Where will the machines come from?’, ‘What will be our relationship with them?’, and the apocalyptic again, ‘what will be at the end?’. Subsequent calls for our post-human ‘Mind Children’ to spread outwards from the earth might be critiqued as the “seminal fantasies of [male] technology enthusiasts” (Boss 2020, p39), especially as, as we have noted, the AI Creation Meme tends to show ‘the Creator’ as a white male.

However, there are opportunities in critiquing these tendencies and tropes; as with the post-human narrative, we can be alert to what Graham describes as the “contingencies of the boundaries by which we separate the human from the non-human, the technological from the biological, artificial from natural” (2013, p1). Elsewhere I have remarked on the liminality of AI itself and how we might draw on the work of anthropologists such as Victor Turner and Mary Douglas, as well as the philosopher Julia Kristeva, to understand how AI is conceived of, sometimes apocalyptically, as a ‘Mind out of Place” (Singler 2019) as people attempt to understand it in relation to themselves. Paying attention to where and how we force such liminal beings and ideas into specific shapes and what those shapes are can illuminate our preconceptions and biases.

Likewise, the common distinction between the secular and the religious is problematised by the creative remixing of the familiar and the new in the AI Creation Meme. For some, a boundary between these two ‘domains’ is a moral necessity; some see religion as a pernicious irrationality that should be secularised out of society for the sake of reducing harm. There can be a narrative of collaboration in AI discourse, a view that the aims of AI (the development and improvement of intelligence) and the aims of atheism (the end of irrationalities like religion) are sympathetic and build cumulatively upon each other. So, for some, illustrating AI with religious imagery can be anathema. Whether or not we agree with that stance, we can use the AI Creation Meme as an example to question the role of such images in how the public comes to trust or distrust AI. For some, AI as a god or as the ‘child’ of humankind is a frightening idea. For others, it is reassuring and utopian. In either case, this kind of imagery might obscure the reality of current AI’s very un-god-like flaws, the humans currently involved in making and implementing AI, and what biases these humans have that might lead to very real harms.

Bibliography

Boss, Jacob 2020. “For the Rest of Time They Heard the Drum.” In Theology and Westworld. Edited by Juli Gittinger and Shayna Sheinfeld. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Darwin, Charles 1871. “Letter to Joseph Hooker.” in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter. London, UK: John Murray, vol. 3, p. 18.

Graham, Elaine 2013. “Manifestations of The Post-Secular Emerging Within Discourses Of Posthumanism.” Unpublished Conference Presentation Given at the ‘Imagining the Posthuman’ Conference at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, July 7–8. Available online: http://hdl.handle.net/10034/297162 (accessed 3 April 2020).

Grieser, Alexandra 2017. “Blue Brains: Aesthetic Ideologies and the Formation of Knowledge Between Religion and Science.” In Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept. Edited by A. Grieser and J. Johnston. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

Helmers, Marguerite 2004. “Framing the Fine Arts Through Rhetoric”. In Defining Visual Rhetoric. Edited by Charles Hills and Maguerite Helmers. Mahweh: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 63–86.

Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark (1980) Metaphors we Live by, Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press

Pope John Paul II. 1994. “Entriamo Oggi”, homily preached in the mass to celebrate the unveiling of the restorations of Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, 8 April 1994, available at http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1994/documents/hf_jpii_ hom_19940408_restauri-sistina.html (accessed on 19 May 2020)

Sikora, Tomasz 2010. “Performing the (Non) Human: A Tentatively Posthuman Reading of Dionne Brand’s Short Story ‘Blossom’”. Available online: https://depot.ceon.pl/handle/123456789/2190 (accessed 30 March 2020).

Singler, Beth 2020. “‘Blessed by the Algorithm’: Theistic Conceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Online Discourse” In Journal of AI and Society. doi:10.1007/s00146-020-00968-2.

Singler, Beth 2019. “Existential Hope and Existential Despair in AI Apocalypticism and Transhumanism” in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 54: 156–76.

Singler, Beth 2014 “‘SEE MOM IT IS REAL’: The UK Census, Jediism and Social Media”, in Journal of Religion in Europe, (2014), 7(2), 150-168. https://doi.org/10.1163/18748929-00702005

AI WHAT’S THAT SOUND? Stories and Sonic Framing of AI

Dr Jenn Chubb and Dr Liam MaloneyLeave a comment
An artistically distorted image of colorful sound waves containing no robots or other clichee representation of AI

The ‘Better Images of AI’ project is so important, as typically, portrayals of AI can be seen to reinforce established and polarised views, which can distract from the pressing issues of today, but we rarely question how AI sounds…

We are researching the sonic framing of AI narratives. In this blog post, we ask, in what ways does a failure to consider the sonic framing of AI influence or undermine attempts to broaden public understanding of AI? Based on our preliminary impressions, we argue that the sonic framing of AI is just as important as other narrative features and propose a new programme of research. We use some brief examples here to explore this.

The role of sonic framing on AI narratives and public perception

Music is useful. We employ music every day to change how we feel, how we think, to distract us, to block out unwanted sound, to help us run faster, to relax, to help us understand, and to send signals to others. Decades of music psychology research have already parsed the many roles music can serve in our everyday lives. Indeed, the idea that music is ‘functional’ or somehow useful has been with us since antiquity. Imagine receiving a cassette tape in the post from someone filled with messages of love: music transmits information and messages. Music can also be employed to frame how we feel about things. Or, written another way, music can manipulate how we feel about certain people, concepts, or things. As such, when we decide to use music to ‘frame’ how we wish a piece of storytelling to be perceived, attention and scrutiny should be paid to the resonances and emotional overtones that music brings to a topic. AI is one such topic and a topic that is heavily subject to hype. This is arguably an inevitable condition of innovation at least at inception, but while the future with AI is so clearly shaped by stories told about AI, the music chosen may also ‘obscure views of the future.’

Affective AI and its role in storytelling

30 years ago, documentarian Michael Rabiger quite literally wrote the book on documentary filmmaking. Now in it’s 7th edition, Directing the Documentary explores the role and responsibility of the filmmaker in presenting factual narratives to an audience. Crucially, Rabiger discusses the use of music in documentary film saying it should never be used to ‘inject false emotion’ thus giving the audience an unreal or amplified or biased view of proceedings. What is the function of a booming calamitous impact sound signalling the obliteration of all humankind at the hands of a robot if not to inject falsified or heightened emotion? Surely this serves only to reinforce dominant narratives of fear and robot uprising – the likes of science fiction. If we are to live alongside AI, as we are already doing, we must consider ways to promote positive emotions to move us away from the human vs machine tropes which are keeping us, well, stuck.

Moreover, we wonder about the notions of authenticity, transparency and explainability. Despite attempts to increase AI literacy through citizen science and initiatives about AI explainability, documentaries and think pieces that promote public engagement with AI and purport to promote ‘understanding’ are often riddled with issues of authenticity or a lack of transparency doing precisely nothing to educate the public. Complex concepts like neural nets, quantum computing, Bayesian probabilistic networks etc. must be reduced (necessarily so) to a level whereby a non-specialist viewer can glean some understanding of the topic. In this course retelling of ‘facts’, composers and music supervisors have an even more crucial role in aiding nuanced comprehension; yet we find ourselves faced with the current trend for bombast, extravagance and bias when it comes to soundtracking AI. Indeed, as much as attention needs to be paid to those who are creating AI technologies to mitigate a creeping bias, attention also needs to be paid to those who are composing music for the same reasons.

Eerie AI?

Techno-pessimism is reinforced by portrayals of AI in visual and sound media – suggestive of a dystopian future. Eerie music in film, for instance, can reinforce a view of AI uprising or express some form of subtle manipulation by AI agents. Casting an ear over the raft of AI documentaries in recent years, we can observe the trend for approaches to sonic framing which reinforce dominant tropes. At the extreme, Mark Crawford’s original score from Netflix’s The Social Dilemma (which is a documentary/drama) is a prime example of this in action. A track titled ‘Am I Really That Bad?’ begins as a childish waltz before gently morphing into a disturbing carnival-esque horror soundtrack. The following track ‘Server Room’ is merely a texture full of throbbing basses, Hitchcock-style string screeches, atonal vibraphones, and rising tension that serves only to make the listener uncomfortable. Alternatively, ‘Theremin Lullaby’ offers up luscious utopian piano textures Max Richter would be proud of, before plunging us into ‘The Sliding Scale’, a cut that comes straight from Tron: Legacy with its chugging bass and blasts of noise and static. Interestingly, in a behind the scenes interview with the composer, we learn that the ‘expert’ cast of the Social Dilemma were interviewed and guided the sound design. However, the film received much criticism for being sensationalist and the cast themselves were criticised as former tech giant employees hiding in plain sight. If these unsubtle, polarised positions are the only sonic fayre on offer, we should be questioning who is shaping music and the extent to which it is being used to actively manipulate audience impressions of AI.

Of course, there are other forms of story and documentaries about AI which are less subject to dramatisation. Some examples exist where sound designers, composers and filmmakers are employing the capabilities afforded by music to help demonstrate complex ideas and support the experience of the viewer in a nuanced manner. A recent episode of the BBC’s Click programme uses a combination of image and music to demonstrate supervised machine learning techniques to great effect. Rather than the textural clouds of utopian AI or the dystopian future hinted (or screamed) at by overly dramatic Zimmer-esque scores, the composer Bella Saer and engineer Yoad Nevo create a musical representation of the images, providing positive and negative aural feedback for the machine learning process. Here, the music transforms into a sonic representation of the processes we are witnessing being played out on the screen. Perhaps this represents the kinds of narratives society needs.

Future research

We don’t yet have the answers, only impressions. It remains a live research and development question as to how far sonic framing influences public perception of AI and we are working on documentary as a starting point. As we move closer to understanding the influence of representation in AI discourse, it surely becomes a pressing matter. Just as the BBC is building and commissioning an image repository of more inclusive and representative images of AI, we hope to provoke discussion about how we can bring together creative and technology industries to reframe how we audibly communicate and conceptualise AI.

Still, a question remains about the stories being told about AI, who is telling them and how they are told. Going forward, our research will investigate and test these ideas, by interviewing composers and sound designers of AI documentaries. As for this blog, we encourage you to pay attention to how AI sounds in the next story you are told about AI or when you see an image. We call for practitioners to dig a little deeper when sonically framing AI.

About us

Dr Jenn Chubb (@JennChubb) is Research Fellow at the University of York, now with XR Stories. She is interested in all things ethics, science and stories. Jenn is researching sonic framing of AI in narratives and sense making. Jenn plays deliberately heavy and haunting music in a band called This House is Haunted.

Dr Liam Maloney (@liamtmaloney) is an Associate Lecturer in Music & Sound Recording at the University of York. Liam is interested in music, society, disco, and what streaming is doing to our listening habits. When he has a minute to spare he also makes ambient music.

Jenn and Liam decided not to use any robot related images. Title image “soundwaves” by seth m (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)