AI season attracts 30,000 visitors

How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car

A visitor to our Friday Lates avoids detection by an AI-powered camera in Studio Playfool’s interactive game

Sprout

Our huggable soft robot - a collaboration between Air Giants and researchers and students from the robotics lab at King’s - was a huge hit with audiences

Our Mediators

To our wonderful team of mediators whose enthusiasm and dedication made the season what it is - thank you!

BBC Global News Podcast

This special edition of the BBC’s most downloaded podcast featured a panel of AI researchers from King’s College London and spotlighted a number of the exhibits.

AI Games

King’s researcher Mike Cook introduces visitors to Puck, an AI that can design games by itself

Building Better AI in the Open

Margaret Mitchell, Chief Ethics Scientist at Hugging Face, led a panel discussion about transparency in AI design to mark the start of London Data Week.

Does AI Care?

A visitor to Sofie Layton’s installation listens to reflections on the nature of AI by young adults with experience of cancer

Can We Trust AI?

King’s PhD students Jhanelle White and Tiarna Lee led a series of conversations looking at trust, bias and some of the myths surrounding AI.

AI Ethics Through Design

MA students from London College of Communications display the shortlisted entries to the AI Ethics Through Design brief at our Friday Late

O-Horizon

Visitors add their hopes for how they wish AI to be to Jessica Montgomery’s interactive installation

AI and the Arts: Who's Responsible?

Visual notetaker Jonny Glover captures discussions at the first of two days of workshops looking at the implications of AI for the arts sector

Named as one of the best free exhibitions in London by Evening Standard, Condé Nast Traveller and Visit London, Science Gallery London’s 2023 season AI: Who’s Looking After Me? came to a close last weekend, having enjoyed a hugely positive response from visitors and critics alike.

Presented in collaboration with FutureEverything, the season aimed to look beyond the hype and take a playful and questioning look at this fast-developing technology from a range of perspectives.

“Rarely has an exhibition been more timely” The Times

“A space in which we can pause, reflect and leave with our hearts a little less heavy with worry and a little more full of care” Museums Association

The exhibition featured 13 collaborations between artists, King’s College London researchers, technologists, patient groups and young people, including seven new commissions. Among the highlights were Air Giants’ huggable robot Sprout, developed with King’s robotics researchers and students; Blast Theory’s experiment in AI-powered pet care, Cat Royale; Wesley Goatley’s thought-provoking Alexa graveyard, Newly Forgotten Technologies; and Sarah Selby’s Lumen Prize-winning Between the Lines, a creative intervention which highlights the use of algorithms in Home Office decision-making.

In total, we welcomed 30,000 people to the exhibition and accompanying events programme, which included two capacity Friday Lates; a visionary workshop with the Stemettes; lunchtime presentations from King’s researchers in the AI Forum; new spoken word performances by Poetry Luv’s young artists; and a series of timely panel discussions exploring transparency, regulation, and AI’s implications for healthcare and the workplace.

Over the course of the 7-month season, we partnered with London Data Week; BBC World Service who recorded a special edition of their Global News Podcast at the gallery; BRAID UK with whom we hosted two days of sector-facing workshops focusing on AI and the arts; and King’s newly formed Digital Futures Institute to discuss the future of AI development.

Reflecting on the season, FutureEverything’s Creative Director Irini Papadimitriou said, “This was such a rewarding and delightful project to work on! At FutureEverything, we are grateful to everyone involved in the season, and of course to Science Gallery London and King's for enabling such a timely project and conversations to take place. Collaboration, interdisciplinary work, and critical thinking are important for interrogating and challenging AI systems and hyped AI narratives, and AI: Who's Looking After Me? was a much-needed opportunity for facilitating these exchanges, critical discourse, but also for involving diverse communities in the process.”

Siddharth Khajuria, Director of Science Gallery London added, “Thank you so much to the audiences, participants, collaborators and colleagues who shaped AI: Who’s Looking After Me? We wanted to help develop and share something ‘messy’ - in the best sense of that word - and to take this monolithic thing that is "AI" and slow it down, complicate it a little. Watching so many people tug at the thread of their own curiosity and delve into the dozens of questions posed by the season over the last seven months has been a pleasure."