SpeculativeAI Series The SpeculativeAI series consists of aesthetic experiments designed to make processes of artificial neural networks perceptible to humans through audiovisual translation.

Exp. #2 (conversation) The latest work questions an AI’s capacity for empathy and purpose while communicating with a second AI. With conceptual support from the Center for Artificial Intelligence (University of Oviedo), Birk Schmithüsen set up two independent AI systems that can communicate with each other using an invented language of audiovisual associations. Both systems are embodied by a light or sound object and can receive the messages of the other. The spherical light object with a diameter of 80cm consists of a chaotic heap of 95m LED Stripe, a microphone and an embedded AI computing device. It can hear sounds and create images. The sound object in the form of a dodecahedron of black, opaque Plexiglas with the same diameter as the light object is equipped with eight speakers, a camera and the second AI system. It can see images and play sounds. In order to have a meaningful conversation, both objects produce an empathic behaviour by understanding the received messages and giving an intentional response.