I’ve always been fascinated by the machinery of the Industrial Revolution because you could look at it and essentially understand how it works. Those mechanisms had a physicality to them – they emulated what we do with our muscles, which meant that the Industrial Revolution was beautifully instantiated in its machines. As I began to think about this project, and the cognitive revolution we are currently facing through artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces, I immediately thought back to the Industrial Revolution. My idea was that taking the technology of the present and looping it back to that period – into machines which we experience through their motion – might provide a way of examining the electronics and computers that are driving what our future may become.
José Millán The machines of the Industrial Revolution amplified or augmented our manual capabilities. Today we have the opportunity to augment our cognitive capabilities as well. Also, the Industrial Revolution didn’t give autonomy to machines – someone had to operate them – whereas many contemporary machines are completely autonomous, which is where responsibility starts coming into the equation: do we want amplifications of our cognitive or mental processes going on without our intervention? In the case of Mental Work, we’re asking our workers to initiate voluntary, self-generated processes to operate the machines. We’re not exploiting any kind of automatism within the brain, which we could have done by using unconscious processes to drive the machines. Making an effort to engage something costs energy and time. If we exploited less conscious processes our responses would be faster but, as with everything in life, there is no free lunch: you delegate too much, you lose too much. It is our responsibility when designing things for the public to make our choices transparent, because sooner or later you might wonder about the whys and why nots.
Jonathon Exactly – there is always a question of who is doing the delegation. Who is making those decisions? I think that is where an exhibition – undertaken before these technologies are implemented in the real world – can open up territory that is all too infrequently addressed. These far futures can make us more sensitive to near futures and the present, and they can also augment our ability to interrogate, question and navigate present relationships. Look at the degree to which smartphones are reshaping who and what we are. They slipped into our
lives in such a way that we didn’t reflect on what they did and who we became as a result; what we became when we had the total memory and knowledge of the internet – or lack thereof – on our bodies. Coming into Mental Work and having this almost sci-fi experience of operating one of these machines brings you back to your cyborg relationship with your phone.
José We don’t have all the answers. This area of technology will require new ethical regulations because if our cognitive capabilities are suddenly amplified, they will become apparent to everybody. What happens to privacy in that case? Until now, we could keep our mental processes secret, whereas we are now opening those up. I don’t have the solution to that problem, but these are the kind of questions that we want to generate. There are three pillars in Mental Work. One is philosophical, another artistic and the third scientific. We look at this experience as a large-scale experiment that gives us an unprecedented opportunity to recruit thousands of potential subjects under relatively well-controlled conditions. Analysing the data we collect will provide opportunities to improve the design of brain-machine interfaces. For example, I’ve been told that some people are very good at mental work straight away. Why is that? What kind of characteristics do those people have? We also hope that there will be many people who will start with a certain level of brain performance and, as they move from machine to machine, experience a better level of control. What is the process behind that improvement and how can we de