A picture about contemporary and historical social fears and anxieties surrounding the automation of work, especially when legislation fails to keep pace with the speed of technological change. The left side of the image concerns the past (the Luddite strikes, during which factory machines were destroyed, and the Titanic anecdote: as far as I know, it is now generally accepted that the Titanic disaster was caused by defective rivets, and that even if the collision with the iceberg had been avoided, an ordinary storm might just as well have sunk the ship. The Titanic was still riveted by hand, but automation was already arriving, and the workers building the Titanic felt they had to match machine speeds or be replaced. As a result, a faster but less stable riveting technique was used, which left the ship with significantly lower mechanical strength).

On the right side are contemporary situations, such as an AI-generated Salvador Dalí welcoming visitors at a museum and inviting them to take a selfie with him. The space at the bottom right depicts an art installation I encountered at an exhibition, which problematized the issue of generative AI at the very beginning of the technology’s introduction. This installation took the form of a database comprising abstract artworks regarded as outstanding, on the basis of which a computer generated and printed new compositions in real time.