Washington: The artificial intelligence at the heart of a new art exhibit, "me + you," does not judge you necessarily, but it does analyze and interpret what you have to say.
Sponsored by Amazon Web Services, the sculpture by artist Suchi Reddy listens to what you have to say about the future and renders your sentiment in a display of coloured lights and patterns.
The artwork is a centrepiece of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, which is opening to the public for the first time in 20 years. The exhibition, called Futures, opens Nov. 20.
Viewers are invited to interact with the sculpture, which listens for the words "My future is ..." at several circular listening posts integrated into the sculpture.
The words and the sentiments behind them are then reinterpreted as a pattern of coloured lights. On a very basic level, positive emotions tend to translate into soothing blends of blue, green and purple. Expressions like anger prompt a cascade of red.
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No matter the sentiment, Reddy said, "I want to show all human emotion as beautiful."
And the interpretations will evolve and become more nuanced over time as the artificial intelligence progresses. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon Machine Learning at Amazon Web Services, said the artwork incorporates sentiment analysis that not only decodes the meaning of words but a speaker's sentiment behind the words.
Sivasubramanian said Amazon contributed 1,200 hours of programming to serve as the backbone of the artwork's machine learning.