The coming future is now: Artists, data scientists, and artificial intelligence (AI) in India

Abstract

Indian artists are increasingly incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their creative works. While their output shows the potential uses of AI for art, it also underscores its limitations and engages with common assumptions about what AI is. Drawing attention to the implications of AI for daily lives and its reliance on vast amounts of energy, their works point to the presence of AI as part of people’s lifeworlds and the way we share a planet with it. Taking a multispecies approach, this paper builds on extensive research among Indian artists and data scientists to propose a possible anthropological approach that centers on notions of cocreation and cohabitation with AI.