What does it mean to be human in a world that technology is constantly altering? Artist Trevor Paglen seeks to explore this question in his work, which spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing and engineering. For one more week you have the chance to explore his exhibition From 'Apple' to 'Anomaly', currently on show at London's Curve Gallery.

Among Trevor's main concerns are learning to see the historical moment we live in, exposing the invisible power structures that underpin the reality of our daily lives and developing the means to imagine alternative futures. 

Trevor has incorporated approximately 30,000 individually printed photographs, largely drawn from ImageNet, the most widely shared, publicly available dataset. This dataset is archived and pre-selected in categories by humans, and widely used for training AI networks.

In some cases, the connotations of categories are uncontroversial — others, for example ‘bad person’ or ‘debtors’, are not. These categories, when used in AI, suggest a world in which machines will be able to elicit forms of judgement against humankind. 

In the artist's own words: 'Machine-seeing-for-machines is a ubiquitous phenomenon, encompassing everything from facial-recognition systems conducting automated biometric surveillance at airports to department stores intercepting customers’ mobile phone pings to create intricate maps of movements through the aisles. But all this seeing, all of these images, are essentially invisible to human eyes. These images aren’t meant for us; they’re meant to do things in the world; human eyes aren’t in the loop.'

See From 'Apple' to 'Anomaly' for just one more week at The Curve, Barbican Centre, until 16 February 2020.

Barbican.org.uk