By Matthew Barakat
WASHINGTON (AP) --The artificial intelligence at the heart of a new art exhibit, "me + you," does not judge you necessarily, but it does analyze and interpret what you have to say.
Sponsored by Amazon Web Services, the sculpture by artist Suchi Reddy listens to what you have to say about the future and renders your sentiment in a display of colored lights and patterns.
The artwork is a centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, which is opening to the public for the first time in 20 years. The exhibition, called Futures, opens Nov. 20.
Viewers are invited to interact with the sculpture, which listens for the words "My future is …" at several circular listening posts integrated into the sculpture.
The words and the sentiments behind them are then reinterpreted as a pattern of colored lights. On a very basic level, positive emotions tend to translate into soothing blends of blue, green and purple. Words that suggest anger might prompt a cascade of colors on the opposite spectrum of the color wheel. If you use a swear word, the lights will turn red.
No matter the sentiment, Reddy said, "I want to show all human emotion as beautiful."
And the interpretations will evolve and become more nuanced over time as the artificial intelligence progresses. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon Machine Learning at Amazon Web Services, said the artwork incorporates sentiment analysis that not only decodes the meaning of words but a speaker's sentiment behind the words.
Sivasubramanian said Amazon contributed 1,200 hours of programming to serve as the backbone of the artwork's machine learning.
"Machine learning is one of our most transformative technologies," he said. "I'm excited for people to engage with machine learning in an artistic setting."
The artwork utilizes various aspects of machine learning, including basic speech-to-text technology.
A companion website lets people enter their thoughts over the internet and receive a visual interpretation of their sentiment that is also added to the archive.
In an era of deep skepticism over the data collected by Big Tech, Reddy and her team were careful to avoid data collection of any kind other than people's thoughts about the future. No video is recorded and there is nothing that tracks people's expressions back to them, Reddy said.
Other highlights in the exhibition include costumes from the Marvel Studios film "Eternals," part of an interactive exhibit that shows how movies help us imagine our future, and objects including an experimental Alexander Graham Bell telephone and the first full-scale Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome built in North America.
"In a world that feels perpetually tumultuous, there is power in envisioning the future we want, not the future we fear," said Rachel Goslins, director of the Arts and Industries Building.
The exhibition is scheduled to remain open through July 6. Eventually, the "me + you" sculpture will be relocated to Amazon's new HQ2 headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More