CROCODILE CREEK

Finalist Bluethumb Art Prize 2023

What is the face of Artificial Intelligence? What does it look like and how will it interact with the existing landscape? These are the questions I set out to address in this work, but exploration begged more questions than answers! My husband, who works in the film industry, has been directly affected by the writers and actors strike in Hollywood and we have been hit hard by the SAG embargo.
I chose the crocodile as the face if AI - an icon of Australian fauna and folklore, it too has a bad reputation but also comes with the extraordinary ability to adapt to both land and water and after all, it did survive the Ice Age. I painted it upright, aggressively hovering over its domain because for now, AI dominates the socio-economic topography.
Will artificial Intelligence be a wise and helpful beast (no swimming sign) - the font of all knowledge that we can rely on? Or will it become the new apex predator lurking beneath the surface? Though still in its infancy, (baby croc) are its dangers already obscured by pretty things, clever tricks that hide the possible erosion of human worth? (birds and Lillies) Can AI be contained? (bathtub) Can it grow and develop beyond the minds that created it or is it just another mish-mash of current trends - an assemblage of ideas as limited as the humans that created it in the first place?
My conclusion poses the ultimate question - does the danger lie in AI being better and smarter than us or does it lie in us not being able to tell the difference?