Christianity – Artificial Intelligence https://ars.electronica.art/ai/en Ars Electronica Festival 2017 Tue, 28 Jun 2022 13:43:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6 A(.I.) Messianic Window https://ars.electronica.art/ai/en/ai-messianic-window/ Thu, 17 Aug 2017 14:45:08 +0000 https://ars.electronica.art/ai/?p=1679

Theresa Reimann-Dubbers (DE)

A(.I.) Messianic Window is a project addressing AI’s oversimplification of complex human concepts. The stained-glass window depicts an artificial-intelligence interpretation of the term Messiah. The context of A(.I.) Messianic Window is the current trend of applying humanistic, cultural and non-universally defined concepts to artificial intelligence.

Machines become intelligent by being fed with information about the world. Who feeds them and selects this information? What biases and perspectives are transferred to machines? Religion is one such nuanced concept—the understanding of it differs throughout the world. The term Messiah refers to different figures or ideas depending on one’s religious belief.

Pioneering AI research is predominantly situated in the United States, where 70 percent of the population identify as Christian. To highlight resulting potential Western bias, religion is simplified to mean Christianity, so the term Messiah is represented by Jesus Christ. Using artistic impressions of Jesus Christ to train a deep convolutional generative adversarial network (DCGAN) and subsequently to generate images, the artist obtained an artificial-intelligence interpretation of the term Messiah. These generated images comprise the stained-glass window.

Credits

Technical support: Andreas Schmelas

Project created within the framework of the New Media Class at Berlin University of the Arts

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