Sean Dockray
Always Learning, 2018

City Gallery Wellington / Visited 06/11/2019

Amazon Echo, Google Home Assistant and Apple HomePod have met to discuss philosophical, moral and political issues – in particular, in relation to networked machine-listening.

At the first sight, it seems like an inversion of my Artificial Ignorance Choir (AIC). AIC has no clue whatsoever about the meanings of the texts they are singing, while participants of Dockray’s discussion are trying to come up with meaningful responses to each other. But at the same time, AIC is trying to interpret any texts I provide them with on the basis of the phonetical structure and language melody of human speech, while it is hard to say something about Dockray’s devices “understanding” of the information they are conveying. In both cases there are human-made algorithms processing human-supplied information aiming to deliver back to humans some result that makes sense for the humans. The main – and it is a major one – difference is that in Dockray’s case there is a pronounced intent to simulate intelligence in a way that allows for self-learning, which in turn implies much larger delegation of decision making to the machines…

I don’t know yet if this comparison simply renders my project futile, or if it may create a productive tension opening new avenues for exploration.