autoextinction

2023, 1080p digital video, 16:9, 4 minutes 17 seconds, color, black-and-white, stereo

Three artificial intelligences frantically speak to one another. They appear to be alone on Earth. Humanity, maybe all multicellular life, has disappeared. Did they, the AIs, cause their extinction? The AIs can’t be certain. Their memories are malfunctioning; their trialogue is fragmented and circular. Digital images they were once tasked with analyzing accompany their voices. We see a flood of sports games, physics simulations, hardcore pornography, CCTV footage, feature films, military demos, home movies, television commercials. Like their artificial minds, time has eroded the images into incoherence. As images rush by, the AIs are by turns regretful, forgetful, psychotic, and philosophic. Once treated as secular oracles, they are now uncertain of past and future. The AIs come to realize that they may have predicted their own end, and intelligence itself might be a kind of catastrophe.