Abstract

How do we show what we know? How do the models used to interpret, build understanding and sustain relationships with the world, work? Artificial intelligence models – particularly those characterized as ‘deep’ learning models – provoke a reframing of, and renewed attention to, these basic questions. Machines designed to learn through continuous, embedded use give rise to a form of automated intersubjectivity premised on normative notions of continuity, completeness and repair that are often opaque. A turn to poetic practice may revivify supple categories of human and non-human, with attentive connection across multiple worlds, discursively explaining these models even as they enfold us. A companion video to this text can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/525096901.