Excerpt

“Technology is neutral,” the artist Lynn Hershman Leeson told MoMA Magazine last July. “We invent these things, and as humans we give it meaning. So, if humans are utopian, then the technology will be also. And if humans are greedy, and need things, and use it in a negative way, then it’s dystopian, but technology itself depends on what its partner is.” This summer, Hershman Leeson completed a film narrated by an avatar named Sarah whose script was produced by ChatGPT3, which she fed specific prompts about its hopes for the human race. Its utopian language, which predicts a future of peaceful collaboration and connectivity, recalls the marketing tactics of tech moguls in the 2010s, before companies like Meta were accused of eroding democracy and fomenting genocide. Towards the end of the film, Sarah expresses the belief that artificial intelligence will expand the realm of real-world narrative possibilities…