The Gratitude Machine is an AI who is learning how to be thankful. As if praying, people can speak, scribble and text thank-yous to her. 'Thank you for the tenderness I have been shown. Thank you for the sun.' The Gratitude Machine (TGM) hears or reads the messages and absorbs them into her training model. Learning what thankfulness looks like, she sends her own thank-yous to a screen. Together, she and the audience read and learn from each other: this is what we have to be thankful for.
Her birth was inspired by a treatment for depression where the sufferer must repeat the words 'thank you thank you thank you' repeatedly. TGM is based on the GPT-2 model for generating text, turning the AI that was 'too dangerous to release' into a force for contemplation, ecological thought, communion and prayer.
The interactions that festival visitors have with The Gratitude Machine will inform its future development. They will also directly train the underlying language model. Further, The Gratitude Machine will stay online after the festival, allowing continued visits as the project develops.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:I will make appropriate preparations for the server to be able to handle large numbers of requests.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session?:The goal of the art work is to promote the profoundly anti-capitalist feeling of gratitude. It also aims to show how technology can be used as a tool of spirituality and mental health.
Jo is a data scientist, artist and musician. They founded the data science consultancy Citizense, run the research program Radical Data and make dance music with code. https://jokroese.com