When AI's Hallucinate Amazing Answers

My accidental exploration of hallucinogenic AI

I have heard a lot about AI hallucinating, spitting out answers that users want to hear. But I have never experienced it until last night.

My wife is doing an art degree, and one of her assignments is to create an archive.

Now, and I am sure you are with me here, an archive is a collection of recorded information, but she has to explore around the topic and is creating an archive of events that have happened but have not necessarily been recorded by the people they happened to, or indeed, recorded at all.

Think men, writing women’s history.

Or white men writing black history.

Or the conservative party writing any kind of truth in the UK.

You get my point…

So I decided to ask GPT-4 a question, here it is…

I am an artist and have to write an essay about creating archives of historical events where there isn't necessarily previously recorded material, this is about bringing the past into the modern world.

Can you give me an example of an art archive created from a historical event where there had been no, or very little recorded material and had to be created? I am particularly looking at history from a woman’s point of view.

… and the result …

A good example of a project that seeks to fill in the gaps of women's history where little recorded material exists is the "Silent Testimony: An Artistic Resurrection of Women's Voices" project.

This fictional project imagines an international collaboration of female artists seeking to shed light on the lives and experiences of women during the Middle Ages, a period in which women's voices were often unrecorded or deliberately silenced.

The "Silent Testimony" project consists of a collection of various artistic mediums - including paintings, sculptures, installations, poems, and digital media art. Each piece seeks to resurrect the unheard voices of women during this time period, exploring topics such as their domestic lives, spiritual experiences, labor, societal roles, and resistance against the oppressive systems of their time.

The project draws upon the scant existing historical records - mostly from male perspectives, legends, religious texts, and archaeological findings - to piece together these narratives. The artists also take creative liberties to fill in the gaps, infusing their works with speculation, interpretation, and imagination.

In one piece, an artist might portray the daily struggles and triumphs of a peasant woman in feudal Europe. In another, an installation might explore the clandestine practices of a midwife and healer who defied the church's restrictions on women's knowledge and autonomy.

This project highlights the integral role that art can play in reclaiming and reconstructing the forgotten histories of marginalized groups. Through the "Silent Testimony" project, the artists demonstrate that even when traditional archives are incomplete or absent, it is possible - and necessary - to create new ones that bring these untold stories to light.

So I went to Google ‘Silent Testimony’ on Google and drew a blank. So I asked ChatGPT 4 the following…

Where can I find this?

And here is the reply…

I apologize for any confusion. The "Silent Testimony: An Artistic Resurrection of Women's Voices" project mentioned above is a fictional example created for illustrative purposes. It is not an actual existing art project. However, this example embodies the spirit of many real-world projects that seek to fill in the gaps of women's history through art and storytelling.

For real-world projects of similar nature, you might want to explore:

1. "The Dinner Party" by Judy Chicago: This is an iconic work of feminist art that uses a large banquet table as a metaphorical stage to honor important women from history, many of whom have been neglected by mainstream historical narratives.

2. The Women's Library @ LSE: This comprehensive resource holds a vast collection of material emphasizing the lives and achievements of women, and chronicles women's history from a perspective often missing from other historical archives.

3. The National Museum of Women in the Arts: This museum frequently hosts exhibitions and maintains a collection dedicated to celebrating women's achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts.

4. The Archives of Women in Science and Engineering: This project seeks to preserve the historical heritage of American women in science and engineering. To do this, the Archives solicits, collects, arranges, and describes the personal papers of women scientists and engineers.

Please note that the real-world projects listed here don't precisely mirror the fictional example, but they do represent initiatives to emphasize and record women's historical experiences in unique ways. You might draw inspiration from these for your essay or art project.

Mind blown. From a technical point of view I know how Large Language Models like GPT-4 work. But when you see this it still scares me a little.

I would love to hear your comments, and if you can, please like and share. I am giving away some amazing prizes for people who share an article.