On Friday 4th February, we were privileged to welcome Aidan Meller to the Rumble Museum and Cheney School to deliver a fascinating talk to our Sixth Formers about his journey into the world of art, and how this led, unexpectedly, to the creation of Ai-Da, the world's first ultra realistic robot.
Aidan had brought two original pieces of Ai-Da's art, both self-portraits, which he displayed to the Sixth Formers. He started by talking about how he developed a passion for art as a young person, and wanted to become part of the art world. He worked very hard educating himself on art, and over the years gained a lot of knowledge. In the very early days, he spent time as an art and history teacher in Witney, before deciding that he wanted to set up his own gallery. He ran the art gallery for over 20 years. In the process of doing so, he realised that 1% of all artists, made up most of the art world. He spent a long time trying to work out why that might be, and what might connect all those artists. Eventually, he decided that it wasn't to do with their background, education or anything like that, but that it was that each of the most famous and enduring artists of their time reflected back to society something that was causing anxiety and uncertainty at the time to people. For example, Tracey Emin's Unmade Bed reflected the looming awareness that the internet and ability to see inside our lives was at hand, which it turned out to be.
This caused him to look at the sorts of things that thinkers about the future now were forecasting for the 2020’s, and the one commonality he discovered was the rise of A.I.
He met with a range of people from the University of Oxford, and formed a team of over thirty people on creating Ai-Da. Aidan explained how you could have a conversation with Ai-Da, and how she created new artwork in response to what she sees. These algorithms on the computer vision make her unique. Ai-Da has created lots of interest across the globe, but Aidan emphasised that the purpose of the project was not to create lots of robots like Ai-Da - but to encourage people to reflect on the fact that in the very near future, and already, our lives our being affected by A.I. and that we may find ourselves increasingly sharing our lives with A.I. This raises lots of complex questions and issues, and it is these that he hopes the Ai-Da project will encourage us to address.
After his talk, the Sixth Formers had an opportunity to ask questions. The questions were very broad-ranging. Some students asked whether Ai-Da experienced emotions and was conscious. Aidan stated that she is a machine and doesn't experience those things, though suggested that at some point in the future it may be that robots do achieve a closer imitation of being human-like. Others were curious about how well films portrayed A.I. Aidan recommended Ready Player One and Her as two examples of films that had portrayed AI very effectively.
We are hugely grateful to Aidan for introducing us to such a fascinating robot and project, as well as bringing Ai-Da's artwork to view. We are planning to work with Aidan and Ai-Da on a project with the Rumble Museum in the coming months.
