Can trauma transfer from human to machine to human? GPT: Generative Pre-trained Transformer is an open-source neural network (machine learning) model trained on internet data to generate new unique text.
PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental disorder that can develop after a person is exposed to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, or other threats.
This series of text and images function as an exploratory case study that magnifies the risks of transferring human bias and trauma to machine learning models. The output of these models can affect humans by reinforcing unintended inputs (positive or negative). These models can be distributed through social media or manifest in law-making, credit applications, education and other ways we may not yet understand. A feedback loop: we are what we consume—and we consume what we are. The following generated GPTSD machine dream texts and images were all output in one session (Dec 2020) after training on 593 dream diary entries by an individual suffering from PTSD after experiencing war. These dream descriptions were cropped directly from a larger text and intentionally unedited except for a few minor deletions for clarity.
In my dream: There are construction workers in a crowded field who have mistakenly shot down an American helicopter. For factual reasons, only one man gets out of the helicopter to identify the plane. A second man on the other side of the field appears to have died in the attack. A deadly wire that surrounds the goal has already been stretched to 12 feet. A shooter with a sniper scope appears to be closing in. There is no cover, and it is not safe to fire. I tell the first man to dig a foxhole in the now vacant lot just outside the defense. This will protect us from the barrage of bullets that are falling on us. Recollection ends here.
The GPTSD book and website will have further information about this project. ryanthompson.name/project-gptsd Humans become the stories in which we tell ourselves—and our machines. The tools we create, always manifest the people we come to be. Dreamer 22 (Text Skeleton) 1800 x 2280 pixels Ryan Thompson - December 2020 [Once all Dreamers have been collected a second artwork related to the “Text Skeleton” will be airdropped to the collector holding this work]