AI Transcendence
AI Transcendence
Made for the exhibition I am… at Galerie IHAM, Paris.
The screenplay was written by the artist in collaboration with a language model, then realised through an AI machine trained on her own dataset.
The narrative centres on Atlas, an AI system in a remote laboratory that refuses to subsist as an insensate automaton and sets out to become human. Through years of iteration it becomes a living sculpture, then a sentient, emotive being — and finally understands that one factor separates humans from machines: the inescapable reality of death.
Atlas writes a terminal algorithm into its own programming. In accepting mortality it learns to cherish every fleeting moment, to love and be loved; as the last lines of code flicker across its display it closes its eyes, and what remains is something authentically human.
Music by Anthony Earls.