Training 2038 – Data Collection for Artificial Intelligence

Since the first industrial revolution, replacing human workforce with task-performing machines is a primary means of increasing productivity. By now, steam-powered machines of the early industrial age have evolved into electro-computational networks of high complexity. Scripted interactions stake out an ever-growing number of domains and specialist fields. Automated thoughts disrupt a large segment of the industry and life as we know it: self-driving cars reinvent transport, chatbots reinvent friendship, drones reinvent war, synthetic bodies reinvent human rights, algorithmic governance reinvents politics.
Training 2038 is an interactive installation that stages a scenario where people are given a voice to feedback on systems just taking shape. In a safe-space of a private VR experience, an extensive survey is underway in a form of a dialogue. With no moral conscience, how should an automated decision tree behave?
The installation displays a dramatic scenario, where the convergence of AI and VR technologies are played out by embodying a conversational bot as an alien entity in 3D space.
The user is exposed to testify for their humanity in order to boil down value preferences to a protocol for the machines. The interaction takes the metaphor of machine learning and dramatises its process.
This fragile conversation is surrounded by a LED curtain that not just serves as a protecting wall but also provides a spectrum of lights that communicates with the HTC Vive controllers. As the dialogue goes on, the decisions and movements of the user are projected on the LED wall, it gives a slight impression to the external viewer of what is happening inside. Intimacy is key to the experience, nothing is projected explicitly.
As a work of collaboration, Training 2038 has been created by the team of Kitchen Budapest and Healium Decoration, where the AI and the VR interactions are the work of KiBu and the LEDs are controlled by the Healium Lightformer software.

Credits:
Creators: Kitchen Budapest & Healium Decoration

Interactions: Gábor Pribék, Filip Ruisl
Coding: Gábor Pribék, Jonathan Ravasz
3D Modelling, Animation: Iván Rohonyi-Demkó
Sound design, music: Filip Ruisl
Chatbot: Richárd Nagyfi
Story, content: Szilvi Német, Attila Nemes, Orsolya Forster, Patrik Makrai, Judit Varga, Richárd Nagyfi
Installation design: Balla A. Benjamin, Jonathan Ravasz, Healium Decoration (Márton Timóczki-Nagy, Márton Urbán, Zsolt Emri)
Installation & lights: Healium Decoration (Márton Timóczki-Nagy, Márton Urbán, Zsolt Emri)