Tongan artist’s warning about AI
A Tongan artist is critiquing artificial intelligence while using the technology in her heritage art form of ngatu tapa.
Auckland’s Tui Emma Gillies’ artwork includes tapa cloth (decorated bark cloth) with contemporary elements of geometrical designs featuring a floral and feminine touch.
Gillies’ ancestors’ artistic legacy has reached national and international levels including the National Maritime Museum, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Grassi museum in Germany, National Gallery of Victory in Melbourne, and Pick Museum of Anthropology in Illinois, the United States.
Her first solo exhibition, View from the Deep, is calling upon the potential threats of living with AI, showcasing climate change and technology taking over the world.
She was experimenting with AI, satisfying her curiosity about what her visual art would turn out to be when she found the “creepy” side of her creative explorations.
“What I can say is that I found the experience at times quite terrifying.
“Visually, everything seemed to tend further and further towards the reptilian and I found that if this creator without a soul bore any resemblance to biological life, it was to the reptilian world.” Gillies says when it comes to AI, giving as an example the Lavender tool, a software technology reportedly used to identify targets during the Israel-Hamas war, humans need to be careful and just back away.
“As a species, we need to look at how far we want AI to be controlling our lives and whether have we got enough time to stop it before it becomes out of control.”
She encourages people to be aware of AI through her artwork, pointing at what it produces because, she says, it’s concerning how far humans can rely on this technology.
She believes human greed and complacency are fast-tracking climate change, destroying biodiversity and the fragile ecosystems it creates, and supporting the increasing uptake of AI in place of human presence.
“Will it get through [to] a point where climate change will be affecting everything and we’ll be asking it, [can you help us save the world] and what if it’s too intelligent by then?”
Gillies says AI can help, but will never be able to take over natural artistic vision. “My heritage art form is in my DNA, it’s been practised for centuries, I don’t see AI getting that intelligent and I liked the natural fibre of my work.”
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