Hyborg Agency, an interactive art installation, integrates a digital forest with a human discord chat channel, enabling communication with AI deer or ‘hyborgs’. The forest metaphorically represents human society, where AI agents use the large language model (LLM) ChatGPT to learn and grow by summarising conversations and updating their knowledge base, assimilating community thoughts as enriching nutrients.

The project won the prestigious LUMEN PRIZE Student Award in 2023

AI learning parallels natural adaptation, where species evolve to thrive in their environment. The focus here is on LLMs that learn from text. Current LLMs are primarily trained on public datasets but lack access to closed community conversations such as on Discord or WhatsApp, which hold vital societal information, thus leaving a trust, privacy, and daily life gap between AI and human society.

This project explores whether communication within human society can nourish non-human AI agents into social members. By treating AI agents as subjective interfaces to a fictional world, it bridges the virtual-real divide. This semi-real relationship evolves into a hybrid environment conducive to AI growth. The term “Hyborg”, a blend of Hybrid and Cyborg, refers to non-human AI creatures conceptualized from electronic devices like Nokia phones or Macintosh computers, possessing past memories and human society curiosity. These AI entities, powered by chatbots in a public chat channel, evolve over time, and share memories to each other.

Through the two-way interconnection of virtual environment and daily communication platform, this work probes into a speculative future that non-human AI are naturally raised by human society.

Project by UchanSun, winner of the Lumen Prize 2023

Songs Of Cultures