“In time, we will put our eyes to this light and see that these people are the peers of nature. And forgivingly, when they appear we will lift up our song and sing, and say we cannot praise too much of any single thing.” It may read like poetry, but these lines weren’t composed by a poet — they were written by an artificial intelligence (AI).
It appeared in early December on the face of the UK Pavilion (展馆) at Expo 2020 in Dubai, and it was created from a single word chosen by a visitor to the pavilion, which was then fed to an AI that had previously been trained with millions of lines of poetry. The result forms part of a “Collective Message” — a continuous poetry shown on the bar screens arranged in a circle at one end of the cone-shaped (锥形) pavilion, which was designed by Es Devlin, a British artist whose previous works includes stage sets for the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony. She is the first female designer of a UK pavilion since the Expo started in 1851.
Devlin’s inspiration to create Collective Message came from famed scientist Stephen Hawking. In 2015, three years before his death, he approved a competition in which people were invited to submit a potential message for an advanced alien civilization, with the goal of meaningfully representing mankind and our planet.
In a similar way, visitors to the pavilion are encouraged to send a message to the AI and acknowledge the role that AI plays in our lives. “We don’t want this thing just to be like a museum with lots of different exhibits, and we really want something that visitors could engage with,” says Stuart Bradbury of creative agency Avantgarde, “The AI was created specifically for this project, many AI experts and social organizations, including the Poetry Archive, the Poetry Society and the Scottish Poetry Library, worked with developers to train and improve AI output over six months, and we think we’ve created something really special.”
【小题1】Who is the designer of the Collective Message?| A．Stephen Hawking. | B．Stuart Bradbury. |
| C．Es Devlin. | D．Poetry Archive. |
| A．To introduce the theme of the Expo 2020. |
| B．To popularize the world-famous scientist. |
| C．To state the source of inspiration for this project. |
| D．To increase the authority of the design of the pavilion. |
| A．Es Devlin is the first female artist in British history. |
| B．Es Devlin is as well known as Stephen Hawking. |
| C．All visitors acknowledged the role that AI plays in their lives. |
| D．The AI had been previously trained with millions of lines of poetry. |
| A．Creative inspiration is everywhere. |
| B．Visitors are encouraged to compose poems. |
| C．Poems written by a computer light up the UK Pavilion at Expo Dubai. |
| D．An AI that can write poems was created successfully. |
