A dialog with OpenAI’s first artist in residence

Reben is OpenAI’s first artist in residence. Officially, the appointment began in January and lasts three months. But Reben’s relationship with the San Francisco–based mostly AI agency appears informal: “It’s a little fuzzy, because I’m the first, and we’re figuring stuff out. I’m probably going to keep working with them.”

In truth, Reben has been working with OpenAI for years already. Five years in the past, he was invited to check out an early model of GPT-3 earlier than it was launched to the general public. “I got to play around with that quite a bit and made a few artworks,” he says. “They were quite interested in seeing how I could use their systems in different ways. And I was like, cool, I’d love to try something new, obviously. Back then I was mostly making stuff with my own models or using websites like Ganbreeder [a precursor of today’s generative image-making models].”

In 2008, Reben studied math and robotics at MIT’s Media Lab. There he helped create a cardboard robotic referred to as Boxie, which impressed the lovable robotic Baymax within the film Big Hero 6. He is now director of know-how and analysis at Stochastic Labs, a nonprofit incubator for artists and engineers in Berkeley, California. I spoke to Reben by way of Zoom about his work, the unresolved rigidity between artwork and know-how, and the way forward for human creativity.

Our dialog has been edited for size and readability.

You’re fascinated about ways in which people and machines work together. As an AI artist, how would you describe what you do with know-how? Is it a software, a collaborator?

Firstly, I don’t name myself an AI artist. AI is solely one other technological software. If one thing comes alongside after AI that pursuits me, I wouldn’t, like, say, “Oh, I’m only an AI artist.”

Okay. But what’s it about these AI instruments? Why have you ever spent your profession taking part in round with this type of know-how?

My analysis on the Media Lab was all about social robotics, taking a look at how folks and robots come collectively in numerous methods. One robotic [Boxie] was additionally a filmmaker. It principally interviewed folks, and we discovered that the robotic was making folks speak in confidence to it and inform it very deep tales. This was pre-Siri, or something like that. These days individuals are aware of the concept of speaking to machines. So I’ve all the time been fascinated about how humanity and know-how co-evolve over time. You know, we’re who we’re right now due to know-how.