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\n When Hiromi Ozaki created six AI-generated \u201ctech bros\u201d to debate each other about the future of humanity, she had no idea how quickly, and how closely, reality would imitate art.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cLike, it\u2019s not really about votes anymore, it\u2019s about who\u2019s controlling the algorithms,\u201d argues one of the avatars, a square-jawed, blond man.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt really makes you wonder,\u201d posits another of the fictional personas, whose personalities were trained on the philosophies and ideas of billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. \u201cWhere does free will even factor in?\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The characters \u2014 who appear on large screen panels in a video installation \u2014 are based on Ozaki\u2019s face and voice, but were reimagined as White men. They were designed to embody the \u201cstereotypical tech bro figure,\u201d said the Japanese-British artist, better known as Sputniko!, in a video interview.\n <\/p>\n
\n The result is eerie, with the avatars discussing topics ranging from the future of the working class to the fate of democracy, with chilly indifference.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Sputniko!](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/can-i-believe-in-a-fortunate-tomorrow-exhibition4.jpg\")
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\n The project debuted at Ozaki\u2019s solo show<\/a> in Tokyo last year, just days before the US Presidential election<\/a> and the subsequent creation of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE<\/a>). This month, it will show at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria, followed by a three-month long exhibition at The Art Gallery at Brooklyn College in New York.\n <\/p>\n \n While the work reflects the artist\u2019s growing wariness of technology, particularly AI, she feels it has taken on even more relevance in light of current events.\n <\/p>\n \n Tech elites, she says, are increasingly in charge of the narrative.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey have so much power, so much money, and they\u2019re really talking about humanity like they have total control.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Ozaki hasn\u2019t always been so pessimistic about technology, once drawn to the field as \u201csomething capable of changing our society and structure.\u201d The daughter of two math professors, Ozaki studied math and computer science at Imperial College London, before pursuing a master\u2019s degree in design. She was also an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s Media Lab, where she founded a group looking into the impact of emerging technologies.\n <\/p>\n \n Technology has always featured heavily in her immersive art, from the \u201cMenstruation Machine<\/a>\u201d (2010) \u2014\u202fa wearable device that simulates abdominal pain and releases blood, to mimic the experience of menstruation \u2014 to \u201cBionic<\/a>\u201d (2017), sculptural garments made in collaboration with a lab-grown meat company and a balloon artist, exploring alternative materials in fashion.\n <\/p>\n \n The artist has examined technology\u2019s growing potential using machines, robotics and the creation of digital worlds to communicate complex ideas. It has also been pivotal in promoting her work, with videos going viral on social media and grabbing the attention of major institutions, from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo to New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, which would later go on to showcase her films.\n <\/p>\n \n Since the pandemic, her perspective has shifted. Where she once considered it essential for a more equitable and progressive future, she now sees developments of cutting-edge technologies like AI deepening social and economic inequalities, spreading misinformation and negatively changing the way people think and interact.\n <\/p>\n \n She explored this feeling in a recent solo exhibition, \u201cCan I Believe in a Fortunate Tomorrow?\u201d which, in addition to the aforementioned \u201cTech Bro Debates Humanity,\u201d featured two other thought-provoking video installations.\n <\/p>\n \n The show\u2019s titular work<\/a> is an AI-simulated video showing the optical phenomenon known as \u201csaiun\u201d \u2014 when the sun shines through iridescent clouds and creates streams of rainbow\u2013colored light, a good luck symbol in some Asian cultures. It\u2019s an uncommon sight, in the real world: but with AI, the phenomenon can be constantly simulated.\n <\/p>\n \n And in \u201cDrone in Search for a Four-Leaf Clover,\u201d a drone scans a field of green clovers, instantly identifying several four-leafed versions hidden in the grass. Clovers typically have three leaves,<\/a> but a rare mutation occasionally produces a fourth, and so the elusive four-leaf clover has long been associated with good luck and happiness in Celtic cultures<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Both works consider the true cost of AI-driven efficiency: in the former, how much does rarity, chance and surprise add to pleasure; in the latter, is the joy found in having the clover, or the quest itself?\n <\/p>\n \n Her works evoke the clich\u00e9d quote<\/a> often attributed to American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: \u201cLife is a journey, not a destination.\u201d In the era of AI, how much of the journey are we still partaking in?\n <\/p>\n \n Ozaki isn\u2019t the only one feeling tech-fatigued<\/a>. Digital burnout is on the rise<\/a>, particularly among Gen Z and Millennials<\/a>, who increasingly want to disconnect<\/a> from digital devices.\n <\/p>\n \n While technology has often been hailed as a way to reduce our workload \u2014\u202fOzaki cites economist John Maynard Keynes, who speculated in 1930 that within a century, technology would be so advanced we\u2019d only need to work 15-hour weeks<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s far from the truth.\n <\/p>\n \n In most nations, work hours steadily declined<\/a> throughout the 20th century, but since the 1990s, economists say this trend has stagnated, or in the case of the US, reversed, with \u201cextreme<\/a>\u201d working hours increasing in many economically developed nations. The digitalization of work and widespread internet connectivity \u2014 which allows remote working and 24\/7 connection to a work phone and emails \u2014\u202fare both contributing factors. Ozaki sees the rejection of \u201chustle culture<\/a>\u201d by many young people as a recognition that it props up an \u201cunequal system\u201d in which it\u2019s impossible to win.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere\u2019s been so much technological progress, but we don\u2019t work 15-hour weeks,\u201d she said, adding that instead of working less, we are producing more, with wealthy stakeholders benefitting rather than workers.\n <\/p>\n \n Despite her growing concerns about the way technology impacts our lives, Ozaki has used it to tackle social inequalities outside of her work as an artist.\n <\/p>\n![\"Sputniko!](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/select-vertical-01-20-35-23-wm.jpg\")
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