Exhibition "You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens"

As AI starts to shape our everyday lives, who shapes AI? How are we affected by machines making decisions we might not even be aware of?

Throughout history, humans have imagined how artificial intelligence might transform society. How intelligent machines could make us more efficient, productive and predictable. What began as a dream has today become a reality. AI is everywhere. From smartphone technology to navigation, TVs, music and reading platforms recommendations for content to watch, listen to and read, to online search engines and more. The same technologies, though, are being deployed for controversial applications such as facial recognition, profiling, predictive analytics and policing.

"You and AI" invites you to explore work by artists and researchers spread across Pedion tou Areos challenging perceptions about AI and examining how these systems are created and their impact on society. And asking: how can we reimagine these for the better?

From personal and home devices (smart assistants, light/temperature sensors, robot vacuum cleaners etc), AI applications have been rapidly expanding into public space. Systems that monitor and identify us, from surveillance, facial recognition and thermal imaging cameras to wifi tracking include some of the visible and invisible ways through which AI is implemented in public space. "You and AI" aims to open up conversations about the increasing implementation of these systems and their impact on human subjectivity in the social, working and democratic contexts within the public space of Pedion tou Areos, a historically, politically, socially and environmentally important site in central Athens, a public gathering and leisure space, but also a barometer of socioeconomic changes.

Unfolding through three thematic areas at the park, the exhibition investigates ideas around AI, civic space and participation, from how we perceive the world and are being seen through algorithms, to questioning the meaning of intelligence within AI.

The first section of the exhibition, "AI, civic space, participation and democracy", presents works that show worlds through artificial, invisible systems and new digital bureaucracies. Worlds that are increasingly quantified and categorised by algorithmic systems, and where everything is redefined, accepted or excluded based on machine decision making systems and automation. Do we control the machine, or does the machine control us? Are we experiencing our surroundings differently through the eyes of the technologies that try to make sense of it?

AI is not neutral. So who holds the power? And how does bias in the machine shape our society?

Artworks in the second section, "Seeing and being seen through algorithms", are exploring how algorithmic systems can usually interpret what they see in limited or monocultural ways, just like humans often do. AI is not neutral. Could we learn with machines to better understand our cosmos? Can AI become more fair or diverse?

Can AI help us understand other types of 'non-human' intelligence and build a better balance with nature?

The final part of the exhibition, "Artificial, intelligence and nature", raises questions around intelligence, creativity and our relationship with other species. In a contradictory way, AI as a consuming power of huge amounts of energy and environmental and human resources, it is often being deployed to understand or respond to environmental change. Can AI help us reimagine human and non-human relationships, “better” the planet, or recover lost species?

Thanks to:

George E. Patoulis, Regional Governor of Attica

Vassilis Kokkalis, Deputy Regional Governor in charge of Civil Protection and Environment

George Dimopoulos, Deputy Regional Governor, Central Sector of Athens

Evangelos Matsoukis, Advisor to the Regional Governor and Advisor for Pedion tou Areos infrastructure and operation

Directorate of Parks & Groves, Region of Attica

Efthymios Kokmotos, Director of Parks & Groves

Kalliopi Niora, Head of Design and Planning Department

Frosso Samiou, Employee, Pedion tou Areos Department

Anastasia Petala, Head of Secretarial Support

All employees at Pedion tou Areos Department and Directorate of Parks & Groves

The Environmental Cultural Association ʽWe Insist Pedion tou Areosʼ

With the kind support of Region of Attica

"You and AI" exhibition is a project within the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union