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an artistic way if he wants to communicate his research. He obviously wants to
communicate and talk to others. A scientist invents new objects, and the
question is how to describe them. In all of these aspects, science is not very
different from art.

When I asked him how he defined cybernetics, von Foerster answered:

The substance of what we have learned from cybernetics is to think in circles: A
leads B, B to C, but C can return to A. Such kinds of arguments are not linear but
circular. The significant contribution of cybernetics to our thinking is to accept
circular arguments. This means that we have to look at circular processes and
understand under which circumstances an equilibrium, and thus a stable
structure, emerges.

Today, where AI algorithms are applied in daily tasks, one can ask how the
human factor is included in these kinds of processes and what role creativity and art
could play in relation to them. There are thus different levels to think about when
exploring the relation between AI and art.
So, what do contemporary artists have to say about artificial intelligence?

Artificial Stupidity
Hito Steyerl, an artist who works with documentary and experimental film, considers two
key aspects that we should keep in mind when reflecting on the implications of AI for
society. First, the expectations for so-called artificial intelligence, she says, are often
overrated, and the noun “intelligence” is misleading; to counter that, she uses the term
“artificial stupidity.” Second, she points out that programmers are now making invisible
software algorithms visible through images, but to understand and interpret these images
better, we should apply the expertise of artists.
Steyerl has worked with computer technology for many years, and her recent
artworks have explored surveillance techniques, robots, and such computer games as in
How Not to Be Seen (2013), on digital-image technologies, or HellYeahWeFuckDie
(2017), about the training of robots in the still-difficult task of keeping balance. But to
explain her notion of artificial stupidity, Steyerl refers to a more general phenomenon,
like the now widespread use of Twitter bots, noting in our conversation:

It was and still is a very popular tool in elections to deploy Twitter armies to
sway public opinion and deflect popular hashtags and so on. This is an artificial
intelligence of a very, very low grade. It’s two or maybe three lines of script.
It’s nothing very sophisticated at all. Yet the social implications of this kind of
artificial stupidity, as I call it, are already monumental in global politics.

As has been widely noted, this kind of technology was seen in the many
automated Twitter posts before the 2016 U.S. presidential election and also shortly before
the Brexit vote. If even low-grade AI technology like these bots are already influencing
our politics, this raises another urgent question: “How powerful will far more advanced
techniques be in the future?”

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