On a sunny day in San Francisco, along the US city’s waterfront, families dived into the wacky world of artificial intelligence inside the Exploratorium museum.
Visitors created shadow puppets for AI to identify, used AI to generate songs, asked chatbots questions, and faced off against AI in a game where players tried to draw images that only humans would recognise. A giant robot hand moved around, and people peered into a video game chip.
They jotted down their hopes and worries about AI on cards displayed in the museum. Hope: AI will cure cancer. Concern: people will rely too heavily on AI to the point where they cannot think for themselves.
“It sort of breaks down those guardrails, those big walls that people have put up around AI, and allows them to have a conversation with somebody else,” says Doug Thistlewolf, who manages exhibit development at the Exploratorium.
Art. Office Space. Billboards. Protests. The AI craze has intensified in San Francisco, spreading through work and social life in what some have described as a new gold rush.