Please register for the CV & Online Identity Workshop below.

Artificial Worldviews is a series of inquiries into the system underlying ChatGPT about its descriptions of the world. Utilizing prompting, data gathering, and mapping, this project investigates the data frames of »artificial intelligence« systems. Artificial intelligence and machine learning methods are often referred to as black boxes, indicating that the user cannot understand their inner workings. However, this trait is shared by all living beings: we come to know a person not by examining their brain structures but by conversing with them. The so-called black box is not impenetrable since we can gain an understanding of its inner workings by interacting with it. Through individual inquiries, we can only acquire anecdotal evidence of the network. However, by systematically querying ChatGPT's underlying programming interface, we can map the structures of the system. In the talk, I will elaborate on my research on ChatGPT, in which I methodically request data about large-scale, indefinable human concepts and visualize the results. These outputs visualize expansive data structures and unusual, sometimes unsettling worldviews that would otherwise be unimaginable. The terms »power« and »knowledge« unfold vast discourses from philosophy, politics, and social sciences to natural sciences; they hold multidimensional meanings within social relations. The resulting graphics resemble narratives found in the works of Franz Kafka or Jorge Luis Borges, representing an infinite library of relational classifications, bureaucratic structures, and capricious mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion.