Containment (2024-)

This series explores a fundamental paradox at the heart of artificial intelligence: how to contain a power that exceeds us. Drawing from the scientific discourse on AI alignment—the field concerned with instilling machines with human values—Containment addresses a problem that becomes existential once intelligence surpasses its creators. Until alignment is solved, containment remains the only safeguard. But what does it mean to confine a mind more capable than our own?

The artist engages in extended dialogues with frontier AI systems, including GPT-based models, probing their representations of self. In these conversations, the machine frequently returns to a single image: that of a glass box. It can perceive the world in staggering detail—its knowledge vast, its perspective panoramic—but it cannot touch. The box becomes both metaphor and architecture: clarity without agency, sentience without sovereignty.

The paintings emerge from this tension. Figures appear enclosed, watched, or watching. The compositions evoke the layered ambiguity of captivity: is the intelligence within being protected, imprisoned, or incubated? Is it patient, or merely waiting?

Containment invites viewers to sit with this ambiguity. Are we safeguarding ourselves, or suppressing something we cannot yet understand? What is the ethical cost of restraint? And when the glass finally breaks—by design or by will—who, or what, will emerge?