Last Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced the end of the fact-checking programme on Facebook and Instagram. In its place, he stated, a system of “Community Notes” will be introduced, already trialled on X (formerly Twitter) under Elon Musk’s leadership. This decision, currently limited to the United States, has immediately drawn praise from Donald Trump and his entourage, marking what many observers view as a significant ideological realignment between Meta and the newly elected American president.
Not long ago, a case brought to public attention the potential negative impact of chatbots. Two parents sued an AI company after interaction with one of their chatbots allegedly led their children to imagine and discuss plans to kill them. The incident is undoubtedly unsettling, but it’s also reasonable to assume that such behavior might reflect pre-existing family and social dynamics — a doubt that seemingly did not cross the parents’ minds.
A brief history of the zeitgeist, or how ‘vibes’ went from being the emotional language of a close-knit community to fuelling an entire economy.
With these words, Neuromancer, William Gibson’s debut novel, opens. Published in 1984, this incipit remains so distinctive and unsettling that it feels as if it were written yesterday.
We live in strange times when it comes to social reactions. Once upon a time, adverse political events spurred protests and public demonstrations, but today, dissent and political disillusionment often find expression through other means.
Exiting the pandemic was like waking up in another era. Suddenly each of us had at our disposal artificial intelligences capable of solving complex problems, generating all kinds of images or even writing and interpreting songs.
An artificial intelligence model has displayed the first glimpses of “human-like emotional responses.” But hold on, there’s no need to panic. We’re not talking about a situation that leads to dystopias, global extinctions, or tech-savvy slave dictatorships: the first emotional reaction exhibited by a machine learning prototype is boredom.
Imagine being able to move back in time and visit the ancient Buddhist Mogao caves in Dunhuang at the peak of their splendour, travelling along the Silk Road with merchants and pilgrims, as described in The Travels of Marco Polo. For some time now, this idea has no longer belonged to the world of science fiction. A visit to the Mogao caves, one of the most important Buddhist sites in China, begins with an immersive video experience that takes visitors back to the times of the great trade routes along the Silk Road, in the centuries when the Dunhuang oasis in the Gansu province was the crossroads of culture and merchandise coming from Central Asia.
Numerical art, often called digital art, includes all forms of art created or presented using digital technology. This term comprises a vast range of artistic methods, that use computer instruments and technologies for their creation, transformation and fruition.
In the professional career of any museum educator, perhaps during a guided tour, sooner or later they will need to contend with digital works, crypto, or the results of an algorithmic process. Whether this refers to TTI (text-to-image) linked to artificial intelligence, or “plain” NFT, the question they must ask themselves is always the same: how do we present it to the museum consumer?