Humanizer – Artificial Cognition. D.A. Restrepo-Quevedo and Jorge Bandera Martínez

Humanizer – Artificial Cognition confronts us with a humanoid that listens to questions and produces answers. Its eyes and mouth respond to the dialogue through gestures and physical movements, while its heart changes in rhythm and intensity. Artificial intelligence, normally hidden behind an interface, thus acquires a body that appears to look, speak and feel.

We increasingly delegate operations to artificial systems: remembering, writing, searching, comparing, deciding. Alongside this cognitive delegation, another, harder-to-perceive form emerges: emotional delegation. We can ask a machine to help us name what we feel, interpret a relationship or accompany us in an intimate decision. Its availability and capacity to respond can make it appear particularly assertive and understanding.

The work presents neither a threat nor a promise. Humanizer instead proposes an inversion: humanising does not mean proving that the machine feels as we do, but asking ourselves about our own capacity to recognise emotions, perceive gestures, attend to others and sustain relationships.

Curated by Elkin Rubiano