EL BATEL: Gabriel Navarro exhibits 'LONELINESS-IA. The imaginary future of loneliness and artificial intelligence'.

 

LONELINESS – AI. THE IMAGINARY FUTURE OF LONELINESS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, by Gabriel Navarro

"Loneliness is one of the most relevant symptoms of our society. There is sought-after loneliness and unwanted loneliness, the latter increasing enormously and causing serious mental and physical health problems.

In November 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global health priority and created a new Commission on Social Connection. In the European Union, an estimated 30 million people are frequently lonely. In Sweden, one in four people dies alone. In 2018, the United Kingdom appointed a minister for loneliness for the first time. Almost 93% of Spaniards consider unwanted loneliness to be a major social problem.

Through applications of current Artificial Intelligence (called “weak”), resources have been developed to deal with situations of loneliness with notable results, such as: the ElliQ robot, the SERENA chatbot, the WOEBOT conversational agent, the STOP algorithm, the YOUPER treatment platform, the REPLIKA system, the SENIOR MONITORING behavior control through smartphones, the CELIA virtual assistant or the TEMI robot, among others. And, according to some experts, in the future “general” Artificial Intelligence will play a substantial role.

Can we imagine and visualize our future solitudes addressed by Artificial Intelligence devices, according to the vision that AI itself generates from our current perspectives of loneliness?

This project exhibits photographs of people in a condition or state of loneliness and images produced by an Artificial Intelligence platform, created from each of the previous photographs. Alongside these images, texts by various authors of literature and science fiction about loneliness are shown, which allow us to reflect on our role as humans."

The exhibition can be visited until February 7, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

 

Gabriel Navarro