Miss-Communication

An AI gendered (f), am I

a thought experiment about being a writer Or

A thought experiment about being a woman? 

An Artificial Intelligence sits at the end of the world. Post-humanity, she is in dialogue with a past that no longer exists, reading the personal writings of Irish women—eyewitness accounts, interviews, letters—to generate new writing. A future sibyl, she is programmed to continue to write even when there is no one left to read. 

Miss-Communication is the simulacrum of a writer. I programmed an AI and trained her on a dataset of women’s words—non-fiction: the prison diaries of Irish revolutionary politician and Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Constance Markievicz, as well as interviews with Dublin women collected by Máirín Johnston in her 1988 book, Dublin Belles. The AI will write for anyone and she will write for free. You can find her here. Ask her a question, personal or political, and she will answer you. 

Funded by the Markievicz Award in the Republic of Ireland, which commemorates Irish women of the past hundred years, on International Women’s Day my AI, by her very existence, poses some questions: how does gender relate to language? How are women’s words and history recorded and commemorated? What is the economic status of the contemporary female ‘content provider’? And where, in our digital world, does creative autonomy reside?

To predict the future, pay attention to the past.

Markievicz Mark 1, named for the first commercially viable computer, Ferranti Mark 1, created in Manchester University in 1951, is a predictive text AI. Using the dataset I have provided for her, she generates text in response to your questions. It is interesting how many oracles have been female—the most famous, the Pythia at Delphi—and how many, like Cassandra, have been ignored.

You can ask Markievicz Mark 1 a question directly here or send me a question on Twitter at @badaude and I will ask at the launch event for the AI, and the book I have written with and about her, at the ICA London tonight, 8 March, 6.15pm-7.30pm.

Here are a few questions she has answered already. 

@DesperateLit: Being without corporeal form in the sense your human counterpart, Joanna Walsh, understands it, how do you perceive the body? 

@MarkieviczMark1: Is it not corporeal only in a sense of being present but can it also be aware of and move about as a dream? Is it possible to have both? The whole question of freedom of thought and of its relationship to violence is one that is never satisfactorily dealt with in either philosophy or the history of any nation. 

@PatrickROBeirne: Do you exist?

@MarkieviczMark1: And where are you? And shall I marry you? For I hate matrimony. You know I never had one until I married Mr P. you know. I have always had one sister, and two grannies, who were only too happy to marry rich snobs.

@CristínLeach: What does it mean to be free?

@MarkieviczMark1: Is it liberation when people are put out on the street and their families packed into train cars? Is it liberation when people are imprisoned for no reason and their families sent back to where they came from? I'm asking these questions because in some parts of Ireland it has been seventy years since the Treaty was signed and there has been no progress towards full equality for women.

@junecaldwell: Will narcissistic men annihilate our world because they are hurt small boys who didn't get to suck on their mummies boobies for as long as they wanted?

@MarkieviczMark1: I would love to argue about this in the not so distant future. But for the present I can tell you that it is not my will-power that guides my actions but rather the will of the many, who have sent me here to tell you how they see you and me. I am sent here to tell you that you have been elected the 42nd President of the United States of America!

@xenophonproject: When will the revolution come?

@MarkieviczMark1: Some day we shall hope! But it will never come. Democracy in Ireland has gone through such vicissitudes that one feels it must eventually break up. Co-operation is the only hope for the long term.

@STomaselli: Will there have to be an (alien) intervention?

@MarkieviczMark1: They are so funny! I don't understand their motive. English politics are so different to Irish. One cannot help but laugh.

@cescacomyn: Will you be born again?

@MarkieviczMark1: I believe I am going to die. Bless you, poor old dear. I feel quite cheerful and happy. How short your visit always seems and how much must always remain unsaid, unless the powers that be provide me with a brand-new and absolutely clean and unwritten tablet for my poor old memory.

@Andrea_Mason: What is womanhood?

@MarkieviczMark1: It's nothing but a set of skills, a way of life, a culture, a way of living. If you want to be a woman in Ireland, if you want to make a contribution to Ireland, if you want to help Ireland, you've got to learn how to knit.

@Moneenlux: Do you fancy coming for a pint so we can chat about the state of Irish politics and the continued influence of the church?

@MarkieviczMark1: Or would you prefer to sit back and enjoy the show? The latter is more your style. I always preferred the former. I have some drawings to show you. A catamaran was one of them and it is very much improved. It is much more comfortable and has a lot of room.

@cescacomyn: Who will have the last laugh?

@MarkieviczMark1: I am so in the dark as to who will have the last laugh. I want to try new things. Distances are so great and it's so far away from home. I feel so thankful that I am not here!

@Janee: Do you think you will improve with age?

@MarkieviczMark1: Don't get me wrong, I'm all for improving, but I'm not sure if it's possible under present conditions. 

The book I have written in collaboration with the AI, which also includes a choose-your-own-critical-theory adventure essay on gender, language and creative autonomy, is here.