Friendly Fire

A Machine that can see.
A Machine that can think.
A Machine that can do.

Surveillance cameras  are now ubiquitous, peering from every corner of our cities in the name of citizens’ safety. Military bases lie concealed beneath meticulously landscaped hills, while biometric scanners streamline airport security checks. Rifles are proudly shown as trophies on Tinder, while water guns are wielded by children’s hands on sunny Italian beaches. It’s all fun and games, until the realization dawns: the target encompasses us all.

Nothing new under the sun: old ideas rejuvenated by new shiny toys. We endow machines with sight, they scrutinize us. We bestow upon them cognition, they ponder our existence. We furnish them with hands, what actions will they take toward us?

In the piece “Friendly Fire”, AATB & Leonardo Angelucci explore how state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and robotics are rapidly converging, propelling us into uncharted realms. Here, machines, robots, and pseudo-intelligent contraptions acquire a newfound sense of agency, influencing and interacting with their surroundings.

A robotic Cyclop, equipped with a monocular camera and bolstered by a robust neural processing system, is endowed with the ability to observe and engage with people unpredictably. The inner mechanisms of its decision-making processes are hard to grasp. Is it acting out of self-defense, aggression, or perhaps mere amusement? In its enigmatic behavior, it may be on the cusp of learning what it means to be human.