How Do I Survive ?

“How do I survive? was written with machines over the course of a year. I say ‘with,’ not ‘by,’ since the text was generated using a series of customized Al models trained on collections of fiction that I have arranged and tuned by trial and error. These large language models are embodied in twelve artworks. Each work has a thermostat that reads the room’s temperature and humidity. Each asks itself: How do I survive?Changes in the surrounding heat and moisture shape their responses. This book gathers bodies of text that were produced by the works as they asked themselves this question over and over again.”

How do I survive? concludes with an essay by French art critic Ingrid Luquet-Gad, who analyzes the logics and dynamics of Jacoby’s experiment with large language models, and further discusses how such programs challenge preconceptions of subjectivity and the self.