In Conversation with Software – an AI Walk Through the Ancient Agora

–PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUES–

In Conversation with Software – an AI Walk Through the Ancient Agora is a peripatetic – dialogical guided-tour, based on conversations of its creator with models of Artificial Intelligence (AI), taking the form of a stroll through the Ancient Agora, in the heart of Athens. George Drivas invites an AI model to ‘walk’ alongside him in this emblematic landmark of the city; a philosophical conversation of questions and answers follows, modeled after a Socratic dialogue. The context is already known beforehand: the AI model is unaware of its surroundings, without a clue about the environment.

Unable to track information online and lacking the necessary data, AI is called to ‘interpret’ the image of every point of the walk and to express its ‘spontaneous’, ‘non-historical’ thoughts. At the same time, it is invited to imagine and ‘integrate’ itself into various points in the Ancient Agora.

The conversation takes place around three dimensions, – past, present, future – with AI being encouraged to comment on a possible past it can envision in the Agora, the present, and a possible future in about a hundred years from now, including itself and its own ‘existence’ within these hypothetical scenarios.

Following a specific itinerary inside the Ancient Agora, the spectators stop at chosen spots to listen to the AI describing a monument, a possible evolution of the area in the future, a concern, a thought, or a poem it has ‘written’ to bid the people farewell at the Odeon of Agrippa, at the center of the archaeological site.

Through a peripatetic dialogue with artificial intelligence, the work opens a field of discussion suggesting alternative fictional readings of the ancient monument, attributing to AI a familiar, almost human essence. Ultimately, the model starts to express existential anxiety, and invites us to imagine ourselves in a, more or less, possible version of the forthcoming Tomorrow.