Es Devlin owns a really great bell. It’s a singing bowl – originally used in Buddhist chanting rituals but now found in most quality yoga classes. This particular bell hits just the right frequency to make my temples vibrate pleasantly and, from the way the others gathered around the workbench at Oxford Kilns fall silent when Devlin strikes it, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling my head go ping.
Devlin is calling order on a group of artists, AI researchers, spiritual leaders, academics and experts from global tech gathered at the kilns to discuss AI and make pots at the AI and Earth conference organised by the artist and stage designer.
double quotation markIt’s an antidote to eyes on screens and hands dancing over keyboards
Although Devlin arranged it, she doesn’t know who we all are. “I asked the university team to invite AI practitioners with a divergent set of viewpoints,” she says. “I witnessed a parallel practice at an artists’ retreat at a monastery last year. The monks encourage guests to introduce themselves by first names only. So, for example, at a retreat for climate activists led by diplomat Christiana Figueres, oil company executives and activists meditated, cooked and washed dishes together before learning one another’s often opposing positions, which made finding common ground more possible.”
‘I felt the most appropriate place to hold the conference would be in a potters’ workshop’ … Devlin. Photograph: Ellie Kurttz
Our conference is in preparation for the opening ceremony of the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, the biggest single building project that Oxford University has ever embarked on and, unlike most of its look-but-don’t-touch real estate, the ground floor of this centre is open to the public and includes a gallery, cinema, two theatres and the world’s first Passivhaus concert hall. As well as standard humanities – languages, philosophy and histories – the centre is home to the Institute for Ethics in AI, a fast-growing area of moral philosophy and the department with which Devlin has collaborated.
The installation 360 Vessels by Devlin and the American composer Nico Muhly will be performed at the centre’s opening festival. The 360 pots – ours (and others made by the public at workshops) – will be arranged on three circular tables amid the audience beneath the octagonal dome of the centre’s great hall. “A vessel for every degree of difference of point of view,” says Devlin.
The University Chamber Choir will perform Muhly’s choral piece, which draws on ideas from verse by the 17th-century theologian and poet Thomas Traherne. While we make our pots today, we will discuss the impact of AI on the Earth. In subsequent workshops, participants will hear an edited version of today’s conversation as they work and talk.
And if all the layers of reference and meaning here are now making your head ping, well that’s how Devlin works. Whether making set designs for theatre and pop stars’ stadium tours or creating her own art for exhibition, she wants co-authors, collaborators and audience participation – the art doesn’t happen unless everyone mucks in and engages with the ideas and a physical experience.
Here, the mucking in is literal: sleeves are rolled up and clay kneaded. Two potters patiently guide us as we coil clay into vessels, make pinch pots and decorate and shape some simple bowls into more embellished pieces.
“I felt the most appropriate place to hold the conference would be in a potters’ workshop – with our hands in contact with 160m-year-old Jurassic clay! It’s an antidote to eyes in front of screens with our hands dancing over keyboards,” says Devlin.
We may not know each other’s names but some great ones are thrown up in the debate. There is, of course, Alan Turing and whether the 1950 Turing test of a machine’s ability to think should be updated to look for compassion. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, first introduced in a published short story in 1942, are also discussed. Ethan Mollick, author of the 2024 book Co-Intelligence, gets a shout-out for his centaurs or cyborgs concept describing how humans use AI for clearly defined tasks or for close collaboration. Conversation also covered the Compost computer, a prototype machine that converts bioenergy into electricity, grounding technology back in the land. One participant had just been reading Jorge Luis Borges’s 1945 short story The Aleph, about a point in space that contains all other points; another had just got back from discussing AI with the Dalai Lama.
Creating a viewpoint … crafting one of the 360 vessels. Photograph: Ellie Kurttz
Special mention goes to one of the potters leading the workshop who noted that this whole conversation was a luxury. She explained that her family came from what many would call the third, or developing, world, and that no one there was asked what they thought about AI, it was just happening. A good point well made on behalf of the majority of the world’s population.
After the conference, Devlin said she was pleased with how it had gone. She had been thinking about the participant who explained that, while he could understand all the logical reasons not to anthropomorphise AI, he couldn’t resist it. Devlin herself has been exploring large language models for a decade now and she is interested in the language used to describe AI. She had read in Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism about digital shadows, and it made her think about Peter Pan losing his shadow.
She concluded: “I am aware that my art and my words and my every choice, my presence, is being used to train the algorithms that concentrate wealth among a small number of individuals, and, in spite of this – however confusing, however painful – I would like to try to stitch my digital shadow back on to my feet and dance with it myself, and invite others to dance with it too.”
Es Devlin and Nico Muhly: 360 Vessels – A Choral Installation will be on show at Open House, a free festival at the Schwarzman Centre, Oxford, on 25 April