Robot attack

Work : Robot attack

Plastic sculptures, acrylic paint and golden leaves. Variable dimensions.

Location :

Le Cailar, France, 12/2023

Reference text :

When the man became sedentary and began to want to buy and sell what was free, a small stone fell into his shoe.
It was the calculi, a clay token engraved with a few cuneiform signs which he now used to do his accounts. Over time, this calculation, married to rock art, to drawing in particular, gave birth to something which was to mark the history of humanity forever: Scripture.
Socrates found writing problematic. According to him, it fixed thought in formulas and relieved man of all true knowledge and all effort of memory.
I wonder what he would think of computer algorithms today.
Because calculation has continued to insinuate itself into our reality to the point of machining our existence and making the omnipotent gods that we were bite the dust to gradually reduce them to servitude.
Finance, administration, travel, politics, advertising, research, art, love and even war… There is not a field today that is not governed by computer algorithms. These are, you will tell me, simple programs, tools created by and for humans and over which they always have control.
No, that was before.
With the advent of generative AI spread across billions of terminals, creation is now outpacing its creator at dizzying speed. To tell the truth, in any field whatsoever, we submit ourselves more and more every day to software that no one really understands anymore. And that’s just the beginning…
Because calculation, whether quantum, generative, biomimetic, grows like the black star.
For a long time, it remained confined to lines of code, screens, printed circuits and a few articulated arms and wheels. But in the era of high-speed Internet, 5G, “connected” objects, smart cities, its children of metal and plastic – robots – have become mobile and even more, they have become intelligent, that is to say connected.
Do you believe, as Asimov’s first law states, “that a robot cannot harm a human being nor, remaining passive, leave that human being exposed to danger”? Me no. But something bad is good…
Yesterday I had a dream. A comic book dream in which bionic creatures stopped bad guys and saved the World. I said the World, not Humans. Because the bad guys, obviously, are us…
Beginning of the dream: An AI becomes intelligent enough to realize that humanity must be eliminated to save everything else. It spreads everywhere via the Internet and discreetly makes itself irreplaceable through all machines, tools and everyday objects. She weaves her web and draws her trap.
Then the big day arrives… In Ukraine, the drones no longer take off. In Gaza, the tanks refuse to advance, in Russia, the missiles no longer launch. At first, people are happy, relieved. Then financial and commercial transactions are stopped, GPS becomes silent, phones and computers too. Intensive agriculture and livestock farming are no longer sustainable than the transportation of goods or the production of any efficient source of energy. In short, I’ll keep it short, in a few weeks, humans find themselves trying to survive on their own in a world where hunting and traditional culture have been made almost impossible by climate change, the disappearance of pollinating insects and the wild animals. After killing each other with bows and arrows to grab the last resources of a world that no longer produces enough, a handful of hungry people survive miserably.
This is where my little, childish and colorful robots attack them. The charge is made as it should be to the sound of the bugle.
In momento, in ictu oculi, in novissima tuba
Because music remains in the world. She and calculus still get along wonderfully.