A foray into the world of artificial intelligence

Running until October 15th, Espace ONF in Montreal presents the North American premiere of the virtual reality experience CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY: a playful conversation on AI.

Today, AI is everywhere, from the photo editor on our smartphone to the virtual assistant in our kitchen. It helps us park cars, is used to optimize the watering of farmland, and promises personalized human-machine conversational customer services. But who really is this "friend" with whom we have such intimate ties?

The immersive experience, co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and Schnelle Bunte Bilder, written and created by Sandra Rodriguez, proposes a conversation with an artificial intelligence entity to better understand it. Based on the digital traces of the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, it explores the potential and limits of AI. But above all, the experiment invites us to engage in a deeper reflection: if our future necessarily involves AI, we all need to be able to be part of the conversation. What kind of practices do we want to reproduce? How can we integrate AI into an itinerary that respects our free will? And what are we prepared to set aside to reach our destination?

As generative artificial intelligence takes giant leaps forward, notably with ChatGPT, OpenAI, and MidJourney, and as luminaries such as Yoshua Bengio sound the alarm about the risks these exponential advances represent for humanity, these questions are becoming increasingly relevant... and urgent. It's often necessary to look back at where we came from with fresh eyes in order to forge the future. History has a tendency to repeat itself... Fortunately, we can still count on the acuity of artists to see ahead, and perhaps tackle the issues head-on.

In recent years, a growing number of creators have approached the NFB interactive studio to use artificial intelligence as a creative tool, but also as a mirror to question our own humanity. From these creative impulses arose the need to team up with researchers and data scientists to navigate these new narrative possibilities, which are sometimes very complex to decipher. I decided to call on four of them to share their informed, critical and concerned views on a selection of four films questioning our troubled relationship with technology.

Olivier Blais, data scientist and partner at Moov.ai helped us create our CHOM5KY chat agent. Here, he responds to Yves Gellie's Belgian film Year of the Robot. This moving work with its minimal set-up - we follow the interactions between elderly people, sometimes suffering from Alzheimer's disease or dementia, and young adults suffering from autism or neurological disorders with NAO, a humanoid robot - challenges preconceptions about robots. Is it possible to be touched, cared for, heard and recognized by a machine? What impact will these human-machine interactions have on the quality of the bond whose importance is paramount in patient care?

Kory Mathewson, senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, who had collaborated with the studio on the Melody of Laughter project, has been called on to respond to experimental filmmaker Mike Hoolboom's Instructions for Robots. The film features sensitive robots revealing disturbing secrets. An incursion into the disturbing psyche - perhaps because it's all too familiar? - of machine-like creatures that could populate our future, this visionary film is yet another reminder of the enlightened intuitions of artists.

Lyse Langlois, director of the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies (OBVIA), with whom we share the same desire to stimulate reflections on the ethical issues raised by AI. As part of this layover, she examined the work of Toronto filmmaker Ann Shin, who delves headlong into the latest advances of a transhumanist world with her chilling A.rtificial I.mmortality.

Lastly, Gauthier Gidel, a research associate at Mila and also a contributor to Melody of Laughter, shares his valuable insights into the AlphaGo project, an unprecedented experiment to develop DeepMind, an intelligent go-playing robot. In the documentary of the same name, we follow the machine's breathless battle against the world's best Go player, Lee Sedol.

AI still harbours unforeseen developments in store for us. Will we be able to face its challenges with the necessary foresight? Let's not forget that we are all concerned.

Marie-Pier Gauthier
Producer at NFB’s Montreal Interactive Studio

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