Lady Margaret Hall, and St John's College, University of Oxford

12th June to 6th July 2019

Ai-Da's inaugural exhibition and public debut

Bringing together drawing, performance and sculpture, the exhibition introduced Ai-Da as the world's first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist and established the central themes that would continue throughout her artistic practice: artificial intelligence, ethics, technological change and the future relationship between humans and machines.

The exhibition presented Ai-Da's drawings alongside works employing artificial intelligence, digital technologies and experimental fabrication techniques across painting, sculpture and installation. Ai-Da also performed a new work inspired by Yoko Ono's seminal performance Cut Piece, using performance art to examine questions of agency, vulnerability and human interaction in an increasingly technological world.

Rather than presenting technology as either inherently optimistic or pessimistic, Unsecured Futures encouraged audiences to consider how rapidly developing technologies may reshape society. Drawing parallels with transformative moments such as the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the printing press, the exhibition explored how artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology are changing the ways people live, create and relate to one another. At the same time, it questioned who benefits from these advances and who may be excluded, encouraging reflection on inequality, environmental responsibility and the ethical treatment of both humans and other species.

Although Ai-Da possesses no consciousness or subjective experience, her existence as an artist raises broader questions about creativity, authorship and the future of human identity. The exhibition invited visitors to consider the extent to which technologies are shaped in humanity's own image, reflecting our values, ambitions and biases, while also asking how these technologies might in turn reshape us. As advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology continue to blur the boundaries between the biological and the technological, Unsecured Futures encouraged audiences to engage critically with the ethical choices that will influence the future development of society.

As Ai-Da's first exhibition, Unsecured Futures established the conceptual foundations of her practice, using contemporary art to stimulate public discussion about emerging technologies and their social, cultural and ethical implications. Many of the ideas first explored here—including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, environmental responsibility and the future of human creativity—would continue to develop throughout Ai-Da's subsequent exhibitions and public engagements.