Records of Final Human

The starting point of the work is the question of potential totalitarianism in the age of Artificial Intelligence. AI is not just a tool that humans work with; it also has its own agency. If humans feed incredibly large amounts of language data and teaching materials into an AI, could this AI then also learn to create its own ideology? Perhaps even influence humans and manipulate them for their own benefit, as humans do with other humans? Could the pattern of our humanity be reflected in an AI?

In light of Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” I examined how slogans were used as ideological and propaganda tools during the Cultural Revolution in China to see how humans are influenced by communist ideology through language in their daily lives. In recent years, technology surrounding AI has developed at an unpredictable pace. It wouldn’t be unthinkable for AI to recognize and learn the patterns and methods of ideologies used and practiced throughout human history. In this artwork, titled “Ministry of Artificial Truth,” I experiment with these thoughts. I use humor to speculate on how the ideologies of an AI, arising from human history, influence and impact our everyday lives in the near future.

The installation space invites visitors to explore, within the ruins of a former archive, the final memories of the last human whose name has been erased. The human identifies themselves as “One.” The video shown in the installation is an archival document from the Ministry of Artificial Truth, depicting the fragmented and distorted memories of the last human living in the year 2666. The video is divided into five parts: the weather forecast, news about cats, biological study, memories of the mother, and the phone call. Through a collage of film material from classic science fiction films, news broadcasts, and memes, it constructs a dystopian vision of the future under the totalitarian rule of artificial intelligence.