Future Art Ecosystems 4: Art x Public AI

The fourth Future Art Ecosystems briefing from Serpentine, launched in March 2024, looks at artificial intelligence and the case for handling it not only as a new kind of technology product but as a shared public resource and a form of infrastructure.

Its authors are Alasdair Milne, Victoria Ivanova, Eva Jäger and Gary Zhexi Zhang, and the analysis comes from the Creative AI Lab and Serpentine Arts Technologies. The briefing opens by mapping the layers that make up today's AI, from natural resources and hardware through data and models to applications. It then proposes treating publicness as a matter of degree, running from thin to thick, in place of a simple split between public and private. Three chapters follow: on how AI is changing organisations, on artists who work with different parts of that technology, and on the art and technology field as a testing ground for public AI.

Contributors include the artists Ian Cheng and Anna Ridler, the artist collective CROSSLUCID, and Matt Prewitt of the RadicalxChange Foundation. The design is by Jack Murray-Brown and Roxy Zeiher.

Serpentine Galleries, 2024. 9 x 13.5 cm.