A handmade papier-mâché sculpture called "What Iceberg?" shows OpenAI's leaders and investors escaping a sinking ship. One of its makers says ordinary workers will pay the costs of AI.
Two artists from Odd Friend Studio, a studio in Berkeley, California, put a sculpture of a sinking ship outside an OpenAI developer event in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 29. Ars Technica reported that the work, called "What Iceberg?", stood at the event's public entrance.
Ars described the installation as table-sized and 5 feet tall. According to a description of the piece, it "shows OpenAI's leaders and investors escaping a sinking ship with unimaginable wealth, while everyone else is left to face the cost of AI."
One co-creator, a man in his late 30s who gave his name only as Kevin, said he and other members of the studio spent the previous five days building it. They used papier mâché, cardboard, paint and a repurposed table.
Analysis
Kevin told Ars that the iceberg itself is the obvious part of the image. For him, the point is who gets off the ship.
I think the real metaphor is that this AI world we're living in is much like the Titanic. There was always a contingency plan for the rich and wealthy. The rest of us? The workers of the lower decks? We are the ones that are going to suffer the consequences.
These are the artist's own views. The sculpture is a protest statement and does not present evidence about who will bear the costs of AI.
Analysis
Kevin said the piece cost little money, but it had a different price. "The cost here is time," he said. He described doing everything by hand, taking as few shortcuts as possible, and working to a tight deadline as "a lot of the real cost."
He said creativity is "our birthright" and called it insane when someone sells you a shortcut to escape that. In some ways, he called it "the antithesis of a lot of bad algorithmically generated art" and said that "Making and creating is something that AI claims that it does, but it doesn't." He also dismissed possible criticism of the work itself: "Maybe people will tell us it's bad art? Who cares!"
Ars noted that OpenAI, which it called one of the world's largest AI companies, has faced many protests in recent months and years. The week before the installation, for example, people protested at the company's New York City offices.
The same report listed several other recent developments involving OpenAI. None of them are connected to the artists' motives in the source.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars's request for comment on Tuesday morning.
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