CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY: A playful conversation on AI is an engaging and collaborative virtual reality experience that invites us to examine the promises and pitfalls of AI.
If machine intelligence is promoted as an inevitable future, we should all be able to ask:
What are we hoping to achieve with it? And at what cost?
Client
National Filmboard of Canada
Contractor
SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER
Year
2022
Role
Concept, Design, Unreal Engine, Houdini, Setup on site
Visitors use VR headsets to enter the AI world, where they are greeted by CHOM5KY — an artificial entity inspired by and built from the vast array of digital traces of renowned professor Noam Chomsky. CHOM5KY is a friend and serves as a guide, inviting us to peek under the hood of machine-learning systems, and offering thought-provoking takes on how artificial intelligence intersects with human life.
In the experience you will be greeted by CHOM5KY in a setting that resembles nature, as it is a familiar environment to humans. Eventually it will guide you to take a peek under its hood, where the entire world is turned inside out and reveals that it consists of a vast amount of data traces, which you could interpret as the machine's thoughts.
Why Noam Chomsky? Professor Chomsky is a philosopher, social critic, historian and political activist, but is perhaps best known for his work in linguistics and cognitive science, the study of the mind. As one of the most recorded and digitized living intellectuals, he has left behind an extensive wake of data traces, enough to create an AI system based on his legacy. Chomsky is also skeptical about the pompous promises made of AI. Which makes him the perfect guide to encourage visitors to question everything they see—and help demystify AI.
See the launch trailer for the premiere on the right for some more information.
In November 2022, the German-Canadian co-production CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY celebrated its successful world premiere in Berlin at the KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art. In 2023 CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY will go on world tour.
CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY is a co-production by the National Film Board of Canada and SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER.
CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY was supported by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. It was supported in part by Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Lab Programs with a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. With the help of the MIT Libraries Distinguished Collection.
Created and Written by
Sandra Rodriguez
Design, Scenography and Code
SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER
AI Systems Director
Cindy Sherman Bishop
AI Programming
Moov AI
Composition and Immersive Audio
kling klang klong GmbH & Co. KG