Nina Rajcic

LLMs have been shown to induce representations akin to real-world information structures. According to the standard account, this is because LLMs model the human mind, and minds model the world. Thus, LLMs and minds share properties that ultimately converge upon similar structures. We contribute to this discourse in two ways: a) We argue for an alternative account: LLMs model minds, and minds model worlds, but minds also model LLMs, which in turn extend the capacities of minds. In sum, the world-mind-LLM system constitutes a three-player game, which b) we show does not necessarily converge. We explore the epistemological consequences of non-convergence for world-mind-model systems, introducing the concept of epistemic drift. We offer a new explanatory account of epistemic drift as a social phenomenon, and explore the potential safety concerns of epistemic drift with the introduction of LLMs. Finally, we contribute to existing discourse surrounding LLM agency, arguing that agency is not found in the content of LLM output, but in the way they functionally interact with minds.

As a self-professed AI artist, Nina Rajcic presented an opportunity for us to explore a curiosity regarding how AI artists have been developing a process during an AI boon brought on by transformer and generative AI tools. Although her journey has been one of pursuing text as a creative output, the nature of transformers and diffusion suggested relevance to graphical outputs. The following interview did not disappoint in that pursuit.

Recent developments in prompt-based generative AI has given rise to discourse surrounding the perceived ethical concerns, economic implications, and consequences for the future of cultural production. As generative imagery becomes pervasive in mainstream society, dominated primarily by emerging industry leaders, we encourage that the role of the CHI community be one of inquiry; to investigate the numerous ways in which generative AI has the potential to, and already is, augmenting human creativity. In this paper, we conducted a diffractive analysis exploring the potential role of prompt-based interfaces in artists’ creative practice. Over a two week period, seven visual artists were given access to a personalised instance of Stable Diffusion, fine-tuned on a dataset of their work. In the following diffractive analysis, we identified two dominant modes adopted by participants, AI for ideation, and AI for production. We furthermore present a number of ethical design considerations for the future development of generative AI interfaces.

Museums are permeated with digital technologies that have transformed them into unique cultural spaces by bringing an increasing variety of mediated experiences together in one place. This chapter explores how a subset of immersive technologies – including Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and remote sensing technologies such as LiDAR and Photogrammetry – affect how presence features in the aesthetic experiences associated with the museum today. The exposition frames the challenge of reinventing presence under postdigital conditions by discussing the work of three practitioner-researchers based at SensiLab (Monash University, Melbourne) who investigate technosocial co-presence through reimagining our relationship with the world in more integrative, bodily, and situated ways. Together, these creative research projects induce greater understanding of embodied experience for museums in relation to digital mediation by presenting novel ways in which cultural content can be materialised and experienced, while also surfacing productive interconnections between emerging technologies, people, and spaces that enrich our affective responses and connect us authentically with cultural experiences.

As we become increasingly entangled with digital technologies, the boundary between human and machine is progressively blurring. Adopting a performative, posthumanist perspective resolves this ambiguity by proposing that such boundaries are not predetermined, rather they are enacted within a certain material configuration. Using this approach, dubbed ‘Entanglement HCI’, this paper presents Message Ritual – a novel, integrated AI system that encourages the re-framing of memory through machine generated poetics. Embodied within a domestic table lamp, the system listens in on conversations occurring within the home, drawing out key topics and phrases of the day and reconstituting them through machine generated poetry, delivered to household members via SMS upon waking each morning. Participants across four households were asked to live with the lamp over a two week period. We present a diffractive analysis exploring how the lamp becomes with participants and discuss the implications of this method for future HCI research.