The future of artificial intelligence is changing at The University of Wisconsin – Green Bay with The Vitruvian Machine. This one-night event, which runs from 5-6 p.m. Thursday, May 8, in the Theatre Hall foyer, is a profound exploration of what it means for artificial intelligence to embody human experiences. This event is free and open to the public. open to the public.
The Vitruvian Machine is an evening of imagination and a celebration of human creativity with interactive installations by UW-Green Bay faculty, including Kris Purzycki, Chris McAllister Williams, Paul Belanger, and Abbey Kleinert. Attendees will make their way through the hands-on installations as they interact and create using generative AI (GAI) along with their own imagination and creativity.
“I wanted to use The Vitruvian Machine project as a way to consider the boundaries of generative AI technologies,” Purzycki said. “We push new technologies to test capabilities – how fast? how efficient? how accurate? how human?”
Purzycki’s focus on the two halves of his installation explores how GAI would experience psychological conditions often attributed to humans. In “ObsoleteGPT,” for example, Purzycki said he created a website that simulates AI that is experiencing cognitive decline.
Also on display will be “Ghost Tokens,” a multimedia project by Paul Belanger, that combines video, text, and audio elements that explore the emotional toll of isolation and boredom might have on AI.
“At the center of this space is not AI autonomy, but human creativity,” Belanger. “As participants engage directly with generative image and music systems, their actions send ripples through the rest of the installation.”
“Composed through a finely tuned prompt, its language resists utility, operating instead as a divinatory act, a speculative interface where meaning is not produced but performed,” Williams said about his installment, “The Haruspicate,” a custom language model that responds to participant queries not with answers but with omens and verses printed on thermal paper.
“The measure of AI sophistication has always been the degree to which the artificial can resemble the real,” Purzycki said. “Interfaces like ChatGPT, for example, are popular due to the human-like quality of our interactions with them. But what would happen if those interfaces also displayed the same idiosyncrasies of human thought and behavior? How would we respond to, say, an artificial intelligence who is lonely?”
To learn more about The Vitruvian Machine, visit blog.uwgb.edu/vitruvianmachine/.
