CHOMSKY VS CHOMSKY is a location-based, Mixed Reality (MR) experience by OpenDocLab Fellow Sandra Rodriguez that explores the promises, pitfalls and futures of AI. Artificial intelligence is hailed as the inevitable way of the future, transforming the way we interact with machines and with each other. But “AI” is also a construct – and a very revealing one. The experience opens a timely conversation about AI, with AI, through AI, guided by no other than Chomsky-AI.
Drawing from a vast arsenal of digitized and publicly available Noam Chomsky videos, lectures and online materials, we discover, through interaction and play, how machine-learning works, what it tries to replicate, and how it feeds from our ever-expanding digital trail. As big companies race to build machines that promise to “emulate” the human mind, Chomsky’s legacy invites us to look more closely at the metaphors we use for ourselves. What exactly are we promising to replicate? And in doing so, what are we leaving behind?
Inspired by the teachings and reflections of Noam Chomsky on intelligence and language, and drawing data from his extensive digital trail and material shared by MIT Distinctive Collections, the experience questions our fundamental assumptions about AI. While paying tribute to our endless creativity.
A National Film Board of Canada and Schnellebuntebilder co-production, in association with KlingKlangKlong, Moov.ai, and the support of the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Lab Programs with a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the MIT Open Documentary Lab and MIT Distinctive Collections.