Cecilie Waagner

Ever since then, I've been quite focused on investigating the power dynamics of AI.

investigating questions around our human existence in relationship to AI.

Well, you know, the data harvest, the seductive manipulative qualities of this technology, the labor practices in the AI

industry.

But maybe let's just slow down on that a little bit.

So what have you found in that? I mean, I guess the general knowledge, I think we all know there's things we do not want to know when it comes to most industries in the world, but...

Tell us about what you kind of unraveled with your work and how you had that communication and how you turned that into art.

So I think one of the things I've found is that we all know Frankenstein, right? And in Frankenstein, you know, Frankenstein is the human being, Victor Frankenstein.

And the monster is just called Ida the Monstrous.

is a lot about Victor Frankenstein's own reflection around how he kind of like is this amazing human creator.

And he becomes so absorbed in a way in his own almost godlike capabilities of bestowing life upon lifeless matter, that in a way he ends up losing, you can say, losing a sense of what is it actually he's bringing into the world.

And as we all know, the monsters.

eventually turns against him.

So I think one of the things that I have encountered is how these technologies are extremely seductive.

So we easily end up kind of like forgetting to ask the more kind of like critical questions around the power dynamics in these technologies.

And we also kind of like easily become so absorbed in our own kind of like human endeavors of bringing this kind of like new technology into the world that I think there's too few discussions even today around what is it, how does these technologies actually influence our lives? How do they influence our democracies? How do they influence kind of like the way we ascribe meaning to the world basically?

You did a project where you kind of focused on the data mining aspect.

Why did you do that and what did you learn?

So I've done different projects around data mining and data harvest.

So for me, because today most of us know that basically data is the goal of the AI.

So when you engage with an AI for free, you can be quite certain that you're the product in that conversation or whatever you're doing with the AI.

But if we go a little back in time, this was really kind of like a quite hidden agenda, basically.

And I've done a lot of work around kind of like trying to bring to the forefront of our attention that we're actually sending our data to big tech companies.

And I did that in one of my projects, which is called A Faustian Friendship.

And in A Faustian Friendship, it's inspired by Faust, obviously.