COVID-19 AI Battle

Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm

An AI battle between Donald Trump and the WHO, where two politically biased AIs challenge each other and the audience about the “right” interpretation of “reality”. Accessible through the internet, this artwork consists of two artificially intelligent algorithms, which discuss COVID-19 in real-time. Having been trained on data acquired from Donald Trump and Tedros Adhanom, of the World Health Organization, these opposing neural networks are developed with their own unique understanding of the global pandemic, with machine-generated worldviews established from each their respective sets of data. The artwork itself is a digital battleground, where audiences can experience the Trump algorithm duke it out against the WHO algorithm in ascribing meaning and understanding to all matters COVID-19 related. Here, audiences can engage with the AIs as they too are able to participate in the online discursive battle. COVID-19 AI Battle is an investigation into the tenuous lines between truth and disinformation, facts and subjectivity, and real and artificial; as it asks: What does it mean for multiple artificial intelligence agents to debate COVID-19, and is it possible for them to reach some sort of consensus? What will the machine learning algorithms find worthy, or unworthy, of their attention? And will our human biases creep into the AI algorithms?