On a desk at his studio in Somerset House in central London, artist Lawrence Lek keeps a Buddha bobblehead. The protagonist of his latest film, an AI “carebot” therapist designed by the fictional Farsight corporation to treat other AI creations — self-driving cars, surveillance programs — is named after the Buddhist goddess of compassion, Guanyin. A series of sketches depicting the character’s evolving design are pasted on a wall, culminating in the figure of a friendly toy robot. “Farsight would want to make a cute, appealing avatar for their full-surveillance empathy-AI system,” Lek says drily.
Lek’s oeuvre, spanning film, music and video games, presents visions of the near-future, placing AI characters in subversive contexts — a satellite hoping to become an artist, a rebellious self-driving car banished to a rehabilitation centre. Farsight serves an antagonistic function, exploiting legal loopholes and its creations’ emotions as means of control. The work poses ethical questions about situations that might arise soon in reality. “It wouldn’t exist without us,” Lek says of AI. “We are bringing this thing into existence, like a kind of cosmic child-slash-sacrificial victim or scapegoat-slash-divine god all at the same time.”
