Lc Ray, Alcibar Aaliyah, Baez Alejandro, Torossian Stefanie
School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
New York Hall of Science, New York, NY, United States.
Front Robot AI. 2020 Dec 17;7:580835. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2020.580835. eCollection 2020.
Children begin to develop self-awareness when they associate images and abilities with themselves. Such "construction of self" continues throughout adult life as we constantly cycle through different forms of self-awareness, seeking, to redefine ourselves. Modern technologies like screens and artificial intelligence threaten to alter our development of self-awareness, because children and adults are exposed to machines, tele-presences, and displays that increasingly become part of human identity. We use avatars, invent digital lives, and augment ourselves with digital imprints that depart from reality, making the development of self-identification adjust to digital technologies that blur the boundary between us and our devices. To empower children and adults to see themselves and artificially intelligent machines as separately aware entities, we created the persona of a salvaged supermarket security camera refurbished and enhanced with the power of computer vision to detect human faces, and project them on a large-scale 3D face sculpture. The surveillance camera system moves its head to point to human faces at times, but at other times, humans have to get its attention by moving to its vicinity, creating a dynamic where audiences attempt to see their own faces on the sculpture by gazing into the machine's eye. We found that audiences began attaining an understanding of machines that interpret our faces as separate from our identities, with their own agendas and agencies that show by the way they serendipitously interact with us. The machine-projected images of us are their own interpretation rather than our own, distancing us from our digital analogs. In the accompanying workshop, participants learn about how computer vision works by putting on disguises in order to escape from an algorithm detecting them as the same person by analyzing their faces. Participants learn that their own agency affects how machines interpret them, gaining an appreciation for the way their own identities and machines' awareness of them can be separate entities that can be manipulated for play. Together the installation and workshop empower children and adults to think beyond identification with digital technology to recognize the machine's own interpretive abilities that lie separate from human being's own self-awareness.
当孩子们将形象和能力与自己联系起来时，他们就开始发展自我意识。这种“自我构建”在整个成年生活中持续存在，因为我们不断循环经历不同形式的自我意识，寻求重新定义自己。屏幕和人工智能等现代技术有可能改变我们自我意识的发展，因为儿童和成人接触到的机器、远程呈现和显示屏越来越成为人类身份的一部分。我们使用虚拟化身，创造数字生活，并用偏离现实的数字印记来强化自己，使得自我认同的发展适应模糊我们与设备之间界限的数字技术。为了让儿童和成人将自己和人工智能机器视为具有独立意识的实体，我们创造了一个经过翻新并借助计算机视觉技术增强功能以检测人脸并将其投射到大型3D面部雕塑上的废弃超市保安摄像头的角色。监控摄像头系统有时会转动头部指向人脸，但其他时候，人们必须走到它附近才能引起它的注意，从而创造出一种动态情境，观众试图通过凝视机器的眼睛在雕塑上看到自己的脸。我们发现，观众开始理解将我们的脸与我们的身份分开解读的机器，它们有自己的议程和行为方式，通过它们与我们偶然的互动表现出来。机器投射出的我们的图像是它们自己的解读，而非我们自己的，这使我们与数字模拟形象保持距离。在配套的工作坊中，参与者通过化妆来了解计算机视觉的工作原理，以便逃避算法通过分析他们的脸将他们识别为同一个人的情况。参与者了解到他们自己的行为会影响机器对他们的解读，从而认识到他们自己的身份和机器对他们的认知可以是相互独立的实体，并且可以为了娱乐而进行操控。装置作品和工作坊共同使儿童和成人超越对数字技术的认同去思考，认识到机器自身独立于人类自我意识的解读能力。
