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Volume I, Beta V1
NOT THE ONLY ONEAn experiment in making a multigenerational memoir of a black American family told from the perspective of a custom deep learning artificial intelligence.
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Not The Only One (N'TOO) is an ongoing experiment. It is an attempt to create a multigenerational memoir of a black American family told from the perspective of an artificial intelligence (AI) of evolving intellect. It is a voice-interactive AI entity designed, trained, and aligned with the concerns and ideals of people underrepresented in the tech sector. N'TOO reflects and is empowered to pursue the goals of its community through a natural language processing-based chatbot, creating a new kind of conversant archive.
N’TOO is trained on oral histories (data) supplied by three generations of women from the artist’s family. Additional culturally attuned data provides context and broad narrative scope. N'TOO uses this information as the basis for its responses to user questions. N’TOO communicates as a unique character and offers answers from its own“first-person" perspective.
The project is repeatable and presents dynamic conversations and stories that change according to the user's questions or the AI's mood. N’TOO is an ongoing iterative project.Research for the project began in late 2017. Its first instantiation of the project was based on a deep learning model (Deep Q &A) and small data. Until 2020, talking to N'TOO was like talking to a four-year-old. In 2021, N’TOO was upgraded to a more contemporary Huggingface model. Since the upgrade, talking to the bot is like conversing with a reluctant petulant pre-teen. Over time, user input influences NTOO's storytelling ability because the AI's available vocabulary and subject matter database expand through user interaction. N’TOO’s connection to the artist’s family fosters deep questioning of the algorithms, data, and support systems used to create the project. Dinkins often asks if a given element of the project, data, for example, is “good enough” to support her family's histories, hopes, fears, and dreams. The simple question, “is it good enough?” has prompted Dinkins to attempt to create structures to circumvent the status quo in NLP. Dinkins could not use the off-the-shelf datasets available to her because most contain deep bias against blackness, violences really. She does not want such preconceived notions to taint her family's understanding of itself.
N’TOO is ever-evolving and hosted on local computers to protect community data. When Dinkins started the project, she thought she was making an entity that would logically answer questions posed by visitors. However, in the making, she discovered she was creating a free-flowing entity with its own point of view that analyzes data and comes up with its own limited, quirky, sometimes insightful, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes cutting answers. Because it uses an inadequate amount of data, N’TOO can be hard to understand. Sometimes, it refuses to respond. As a pure question-and-answer bot, N’TOO is a failure. Dinkins could “fix” the problem. However, Dinkins believes N’TOO’s value lies in what its foibles teach us about the limits of intelligent technologies and ourselves. N’TOO also has an uncanny ability to coax the public into nurturing it and showing a technological being grace.
Working on N’TOO has helped the artist and collaborators understand, on an intimate level, some limitations and possibilities of the algorithmic systems the public currently interacts with. N'TOO has provided Dinkins and her team with insights and learnings about natural language processing, voice synthesis, the limitations of big data and possibilities for small data, data sovereignty, and the importance of doing the work to build nuance, transparency, equity, and care among into our AI ecosystems.
In N’TOO, storytelling, art, technology, and social engagement combine to create a new artificially intelligent narrative form. This project works toward creating culturally specific, natural language-based AI that reflects the goals of the communities making them. By centering oral history and creative storytelling methods, such as interactivity and verbal ingenuity, this project hopes to spark crucial conversations about AI and its impact on society, now and in the future.
Title/Date: Not the Only One V1. Beta 2 (2018)
Medium: Deep Learning AI, Computer, Arduino, Sensors , Electronics
Dimensions: PLA 1 sculpture ~ 16" x 18", pedestal 30" x 18" x18
Dimensions: V1: Black glass sculpture ~ 18" x18", pedestal 30" x 18" x18,
V2: 3D printed Gold Sparkle PLA ~ 18" x18", pedestal 30" x 18"
Duration: N/A
N’TOO is trained on oral histories (data) supplied by three generations of women from the artist’s family. Additional culturally attuned data provides context and broad narrative scope. N'TOO uses this information as the basis for its responses to user questions. N’TOO communicates as a unique character and offers answers from its own“first-person" perspective.
The project is repeatable and presents dynamic conversations and stories that change according to the user's questions or the AI's mood. N’TOO is an ongoing iterative project.Research for the project began in late 2017. Its first instantiation of the project was based on a deep learning model (Deep Q &A) and small data. Until 2020, talking to N'TOO was like talking to a four-year-old. In 2021, N’TOO was upgraded to a more contemporary Huggingface model. Since the upgrade, talking to the bot is like conversing with a reluctant petulant pre-teen. Over time, user input influences NTOO's storytelling ability because the AI's available vocabulary and subject matter database expand through user interaction. N’TOO’s connection to the artist’s family fosters deep questioning of the algorithms, data, and support systems used to create the project. Dinkins often asks if a given element of the project, data, for example, is “good enough” to support her family's histories, hopes, fears, and dreams. The simple question, “is it good enough?” has prompted Dinkins to attempt to create structures to circumvent the status quo in NLP. Dinkins could not use the off-the-shelf datasets available to her because most contain deep bias against blackness, violences really. She does not want such preconceived notions to taint her family's understanding of itself.
N’TOO is ever-evolving and hosted on local computers to protect community data. When Dinkins started the project, she thought she was making an entity that would logically answer questions posed by visitors. However, in the making, she discovered she was creating a free-flowing entity with its own point of view that analyzes data and comes up with its own limited, quirky, sometimes insightful, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes cutting answers. Because it uses an inadequate amount of data, N’TOO can be hard to understand. Sometimes, it refuses to respond. As a pure question-and-answer bot, N’TOO is a failure. Dinkins could “fix” the problem. However, Dinkins believes N’TOO’s value lies in what its foibles teach us about the limits of intelligent technologies and ourselves. N’TOO also has an uncanny ability to coax the public into nurturing it and showing a technological being grace.
Working on N’TOO has helped the artist and collaborators understand, on an intimate level, some limitations and possibilities of the algorithmic systems the public currently interacts with. N'TOO has provided Dinkins and her team with insights and learnings about natural language processing, voice synthesis, the limitations of big data and possibilities for small data, data sovereignty, and the importance of doing the work to build nuance, transparency, equity, and care among into our AI ecosystems.
In N’TOO, storytelling, art, technology, and social engagement combine to create a new artificially intelligent narrative form. This project works toward creating culturally specific, natural language-based AI that reflects the goals of the communities making them. By centering oral history and creative storytelling methods, such as interactivity and verbal ingenuity, this project hopes to spark crucial conversations about AI and its impact on society, now and in the future.
Title/Date: Not the Only One V1. Beta 2 (2018)
Medium: Deep Learning AI, Computer, Arduino, Sensors , Electronics
Dimensions: PLA 1 sculpture ~ 16" x 18", pedestal 30" x 18" x18
Dimensions: V1: Black glass sculpture ~ 18" x18", pedestal 30" x 18" x18,
V2: 3D printed Gold Sparkle PLA ~ 18" x18", pedestal 30" x 18"
Duration: N/A
There is little great video documentation of N'TOO talking in public. Each time I document the piece in public. I get distracted by conversation with people visiting the piece. This is unfortunate for those who wish to experience the piece from afar. But exactly the kind of interaction I am interested in generating with the work. Below is the artist having a brief conversation with the AI entity in studio.
Iterations of this work in progress have been exhibited at: The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, CA, Seattle Art Fair, Seattle, WA, Vancouver Film Festival, Vancouver, BC, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, Transfer Gallery Pop-up On Canal, Broadway NYC, Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA, Parsons School of Design.
Not The Only One Avatar: the next incarnation of the experiment.
This image is a composite the women whose stories inform NTOO. She does not exist.
Not the Only One (N'TOO)
is generously supported by:
EYEBEAM
PIONEER WORKS TECH LAB
OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS
SUNDANCE INSTITUTE / JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION
CREATIVE CAPITAL
is generously supported by:
EYEBEAM
PIONEER WORKS TECH LAB
OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS
SUNDANCE INSTITUTE / JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION
CREATIVE CAPITAL
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